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THE NEW NORTH 



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A Magnificent Trophy 



THE NEW NORTH 

Being' Sonie Account of a Woman's 

Journey through Canada 

to the Arctic 



BY 



AGNES DEANS CAMERON 




WITH MANY ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS 
BY THE AUTHOR 



NEW YORK AND LONDON 
D = APPLET ON AND COMPANY 

1910 



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Copyright, 1909, by 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



Published Xovonber, 1909 



CLA251S36 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY MOTHER 

JESSIE ANDERSON CAMERON 

AND 

TO ALL THOSE 

WHO TRY TO LIVE OUT HER SIMPLE RULE 

"WE MUST JUST TRY TO DO THE 

VERY BEST WE CAN " 



PREFACE 

It is customary to write a preface. Mine shall be short. 
Out of a full heart, I wish to thank all the splendid people 
of the North who, by giving me so freely information 
and photographs, and chapters out of their own lives, have 
facilitated the writing of this story. For their spon- 
taneous kindness to me and mine no acknowledgment that 
I can here make is adequate. What we feel most strongly 

we cannot put into words. 

Agnes Deans Cameron. 
August, 1909. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I 

THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 



PAGES 



The Mendicants leave Chicago — The invisible parallel of 49 
where the eagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the 
beaver — Union Jack floats on an ox-cart — A holy baggage- 
room — Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat-Belt — The trap- 
per and the doctor — Mrs. Humphry Ward speaks — Boy 
Makers of Empire — The vespers of St. Boniface .... 1-18 

CHAPTER II 

WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

The 1,000-mile wheat-field — Calgary-in-the-Foothills — Edmon- 
ton, the end of steel — The Brains of a Trans-Continental — 
Browning on the Saskatchewan — East Londoners in tents 
— Our outfit — A Waldorf-Astoria in the wilderness — The 
lonely cross of the Galician — Height of Land — Sergeant 
Anderson, R. N. W. M. P., the sleuth of Lesser Slave . . 19-32 

CHAPTER III 

ATHABASCA LANDING 

Athabasca Landing, the Gateway of the North — English gives 
place to Cree — Limit of the Dry Martini — Will the rabbits 
run ? — The woman printer — Hymn-books by hand in the 
Cree syllabic — Baseball even here — Rain and reminiscences 
—The World's Oldest Trust 33-51 

CHAPTER IV 

DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE MILES TO GRAND 

RAPIDS 

"Farewell, Nistow !" — The rainy deck of a "sturgeon head" un- 
der a tarpaulin — Drifting by starlight — The wild geese 
overhead — Forty-foot gas-spout at the Pelican — The mos- 

ix 



CONTENTS 



quito makes us blood-brothers — Four days on our Robin- 
son Crusoe Island in the swirling Athabasca — Nomen- 
clature of the North — Sentinels of the Silence .... 52-73 



CHAPTER V 

NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

The Go-Qnick-Her takes the bit in her mouth — Mallards on the 
half-shell — We set the Athabascan Thames afire — Sturgeon- 
head breaks her back on the Big Cascade — Fort McMur- 
ray — A stranded argosy, wreckage on the beach — Miss 
Christine Gordon, the Free Trader — A land flowing with 
coal and oil and gas and tar, timber and lime 74~9 2 

CHAPTER VI 

FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

Old Fort Chipewyan— In the footsteps of Mackenzie and Sir 
John Franklin — Sir John turns parson — Grey Nuns and 
brown babies — Where grew the prize wheat of the Phila- 
delphia Centennial — Militant missionaries fight each other 
for souls— The strong man Loutit — Wyllie at the forge — 
An electric watch-maker — Where the Gambel sparrow 
builds — " Out of old books " 93- IJ 3 

CHAPTER VII 

LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

Farewell to the Mounted Police — Our blankets on the deck — 
Fern odours by untravelled ways — Typewriting and kodak- 
ing in 20 hours of daylight — Navigating Lake Athabasca 
by the power o' man — A 23-inch trout — First white women 
at Fond du Lac — Carlyle among the Chipewyans, a Fond 
du Lac library — The hermit padre and the hermit thrush — 
Worn north trails of the trapper — Caribou by the hundred 
thousands — The phalarope and the suffragette .... 1 14-133 



X 



CONTENTS 
CHAPTER VIII 

FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

PAGES 

World's records beaten on the Athabasca — Down the Slave to 
Smith's Landing — Priests sink in the Rapid of the Drowned 
— The Mosquito Portage — Fort Smith, the new headquar- 
ters — Lady-slippers and night-hawks — Steamer built in the 
wilderness — Last stand of the wood bison — The grey wolf 
persists — Fur-trade and the silver- fox — Breeding pelicans . 134-156 

CHAPTER IX 

SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

"Red lemol-lade" kiddies — Tons of crystal salt — Great Slave Lake 
and its fertile shores — Yellow-Knife and Dog-Rib, subjects 
of the Seventh Edward — Hay River and its annual mail — 
Ploughing with dogs — Bill balked — The Alexandra Falls — 
Bishop Bompas as a surgeon; amputations while you wait . 157-174 



CHAPTER X 

PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES DOWN THE 

MACKENZIE 

Drowning of De-deed — Fort Simpson, the old headquarters — A 
mouldy museum — The shrew-mice that were not preserved 
in rum — The farthest north library — Gold-seekers and 
grub-staked brides — Bishop Bompas, the Apostle of the 
North — Owindia, the Weeping One — Fort Simpson in the 
first year of Victoria the Good 175—193 



CHAPTER XI 

FORT GOOD HOPE ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 

Tenny Gouley tells us things — Mackenzie River, past and pres- 
ent — The fringed gentian at Fort Wrigley — The fires Mac- 
kenzie saw — The weathered knob of Bear Rock — Great 
Bear Lake — Orangeman's Day at Norman — The Ramparts 
of the Mackenzie — Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Cir- 
cle — Mignonette and Old World courtesy — We meet Hagar 

xi 



CONTENTS 

PAGES 

once more — Potatoes on the Circle — The Little Church of 

the Open Door 194-21 1 

CHAPTER XII 

ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

Arctic Red River — Wilfrid Laurier, the merger — Mrs. Ila-la- 
Rocko, the danseuse — Marriage as the Oo-vai-00-aks see 
it — Orange-blossoms at Su-pi-di-do's — Trading tryst at 
Barter Island — Floating fathers — By-o Baby Bunting — 
Wild roses and tame Eskimo — Midnight football with wal- 
rus bladder and enthusiasm — Education that makes for 
manliness 212-236 

CHAPTER XIII 

FORT MACPHERSON FOLK 

Sir John Franklin's lobsticks at Point Separation — We reach 
Fort Macpherson on the Peel — Sergeant Fitzgerald, 
R. N. W. M. P., eulogizes the Eskimo — An Eskimo wife 
must make boots that are waterproof — She ariseth also 
while it is yet night and cheweth the boots of her house- 
hold — Cribbage-boards the link between Dick Swiveller and 
the Eskimo — Linked sweetness long drawn out — Chauncey 
Depew of the Kogmollycs 237-248 

CHAPTER XIV 

MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

The Midnight Sun — Our friend the heathen — " We want to go 
to hell " — Catching fish by prayer — The Eskimo and the 
Flood — Pink tea at the Pole — Always a balance in the 
Eskimo Bank — Marriage for better and not for worse — 
Christmas carols even here 249-264 

CHAPTER XV 

MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

Jurisprudence on ice — The generous Innuit — Emmie-ray, the 
Delineator pattern — Weak races are pressed south — Roxi, a 

xii 



CONTENTS 

PAGES 

re-incarnation of Sir Philip Sidney — Blubbery bon vivants 
— Eskimo knew the Elephant — We write the last chapter 
of the story of McClure, the navigator — Cannibalism at the 
Circle 265-280 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE TALE OF A WHALE 

Circumpolar Bowhead makes his last stand — Whales here and 
elsewhere — The Yankee peddler at Canada's back-door — 
Thirteen and a half million in whale values — Wind-swept 
Herschel, the Isle of Whales — One wife for a thousand years 
— Baleen, Spermaceti, and Ambergris — Save the Whale . 281-302 



CHAPTER XVII 

SOUTH FROM THE ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

Lives lost for the sake of a white bead — The stars come back — 
The Keele party from the Dollarless Divide — " Here and 
there a grayling " — Across Great Slave Lake — The first 
white women at Fort Rae — Land of the musk-ox — Tales of 
76 below — Two Thursdays in one week — Rabbits on ice . 303-315 



CHAPTER XVIII 

TO MC MURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

The nuptials of 'Norine — Ladies round gents and gents don't 
go — The fossil-gatherers — I give my name to a Cree kid- 
die — A solid mile of red raspberries — The typewriter an un- 
canny medicine — The Beetle Fleet leaves for Outside — 
Shipwrecked on a batture 316-324 



CHAPTER XIX 

UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

Ho ! for the Peace — One break in 900 miles of navigation — A 
grey wolf — Bear-meat and the Se-weep-i-gons- — Ninety-foot 

xiii 



CONTENTS 

PAGES 

spruces — Tom Kerr and his bairns — The fish-seine that 
never fails — Our lobsticks by Red River — The Chutes of the 
Peace 3 2 5~334 

CHAPTER XX 

VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

The farthest north flour-mill — The man who made Vermilion — 
Wheat at $1.25 a bushel — An Experimental Farm in lati- 
tude 58 30' — An unoccupied kingdom as large as Belgium 
— Where the steamer Peace River was built — The hos- 
pitable home of the Wilsons — Vermilion a Land of Promise 
Fulfilled — Culture and the Cloister — Thomas of Canter- 
bury on the Stump 335-344 



CHAPTER XXI 

FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

Se-li-nah of the happy heart — My premier moose — The rare 
and resourceful boatmen of the North — Alexander Mac- 
kenzie's last camp 345-354 

CHAPTER XXII 

PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE LAKE 

Pleasant prairies of the Peace — We tramp a hundred miles — 
The Angelus at Lesser Slave — Poole coats and Norfolk 
shooting- jackets — Roast duck galore — Alec Kennedy of the 
Nile — Louise the Wetigo, she ate nineteen 355-3^5 

CHAPTER XXIII 

LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 

Jim wins: Allie Brick can't run — 100,000,000 acres of wheat- 
land — Jilly-Loo bird still lacks a rib — 100 moose in one 
month — Peripatetic judges but no prisoners — The best-tat- 
tooed man in the Province of Alberta — The-Man-Who 

Goes-Around-and-Helps 366-373 

xiv 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XXIV 

HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

PAGES 

Edmonton again — YVyllie goes out on the Long Journey — Don- 
aldson killed by a walrus — Two drowned in the Athabasca 
— Steel kings and iron horses — \Yheat-plains the melting- 
pot of a New Nation 374-393 

ROUTES OF TRAVEL ...".. 396-398 



XV 



- 



A 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

A magnificent trophy Frontispiece 

Map showing the Author's Route Facing i 

Sir Wilfred Laurier 2 

Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada ........ 6 

Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat Belt 10 

The Canadian Women's Press Club 15 

A section of Edmonton 22-23 

The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan 25 

Irrigation ditch, Calgary, Alberta 27 

A Waldorf-Astoria on the prairie's edge 28 

Athabasca Landing 33 

Necessity knows no law at Athabasca 36 

The Missionary Hymnal for the Indians 38-39 

C. C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H. B. Co 46 

A " sturgeon-head " on the Athabasca 53 

" Farewell, Nistow ! " 54 

Grand Rapids, on the Athabasca River ........ 60 

Portage at Grand Rapids Island 63 

Our transport at Grand Rapids Island 64 

Cheese-shaped nodules, Grand Rapids Island ....'... 65 

Scouts of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police ...... 71 

Towing the wrecked barge ashore 75 

The scow breaks her back and fills 80 

Miss Gordon, a Fort McMurray trader 84 

The steamer Grahame 88 

An oil derrick on the Athabasca 90 

Tar banks on the Athabasca 91 

Fort Chipewyan, Lake Athabasca 94 

Three of a kind 101 

Woman's work of the Far North 106 

Lake Athabasca in winter . 115 

Bishop Grouard . 117 

The modern note-book 119 

Tepee of a Caribou-eater Indian 121 

xvii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

A bit of Fond du Lac ' 123 

Birch-barks at Fond du Lac 125 

Fond du Lac 134 

Father Beihler carrying water to a dying Indian 136 

Smith's Landing 138 

A transport between Fort Smith and Smith's Landing .... 143 

Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company . , 144 

The world's last buffalo 147 

Tracking a scow across mountain portage 154 

The "red lemol-lade" boys 158 

Salt beds 159 

Unloading at Fort Resolution 161 

Coming to " take Treaty " on Great Slave Lake 164 

On the Slave 168 

Dogs cultivating potatoes 170 

David Villeneuve 173 

Hudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson 178 

A Slavi family at Fort Simpson 183 

A Slavi type from Fort Simpson 184 

Interior of St. David's Cathedral 188 

Fort Simpson by the light of the Aurora 194 

Indians at Fort Norman 201 

Roman Catholic Church at Fort Norman 203 

The ramparts of the Mackenzie 204 

Rampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie mouth . . 206 

A Kogmollye family 214 

Roxi and the Oo-vai-00-ak family 217 

Farthest North football 232 

Two spectators at the game 233 

An Fskirno exhibit 235 

Constable Walker and Sergeant Fitzgerald in Eskimo togs . . . 239 

Two wise ones 241 

A Nunatalmute Eskimo family 242 

Cribbage-boards of walrus tusks 245 

Useful articles made by the Eskimo 247 

Home of Mrs. Macdonald 250 

Eskimo kayaks at the Arctic edge 254 

A wise man of the Dog-Ribs 258 

A study in expression 259 

We tell the tale of a whale 282 

Two little ones at Herschel Island 285 

Breeding grounds of the seal 296 

xviii 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

The Keele party on the Gravel River 305 

The first typewriter on Great Slave Lake 309 

The bell at Fort Rae mission 310 

The musk-ox 3 11 

A meadow at McMurray 320 

Starting up the Athabasca 322 

On the Clearwater 323 

Evening on the Peace 3 2 § 

Our lobsticks on the Peace . 330 

The chutes of the Peace 332 

Pulling out the Mec-wah-sin 333 

The flour mill at Vermilion-on-the-Peace 336 

Articles made by Indians . 338 

The Hudson's Bay Store 339 

Papillon, a Beaver brave 343 

Going to school in winter 345 

My precious moose 347 

Beaver camp, on Paddle River 349 

The site of old Fort McLeod 352 

Jean Baptiste, pilot on the Peace 356 

Fort Dunvegan on the Peace 357 

Fort St. John on the Peace 359 

Where King was arrested 360 

Alec Kennedy with his two sons 361 

Cannibal Louise, her little girl and Miss Cameron ..... 363 

A Peace River Pioneer 366 

Three generations 369 

A family at the Lesser Slave 371 

A one-night stand 372 

A rye field in Brandon, Manitoba 374 

Charles M. Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway . . . 377 
William Mackenzie, President of the Canadian Northern Railway 378 
Donald D. Maun, Vice-president of the Canadian Northern Rail- 
way 379 

William Whyte, Second Vice-president of the Canadian Pacific 

Railway 380 

In the wheat fields 381 

Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior ....... 385 

Threshing grain 386 

Doukhobors threshing flax 387 

Sir William Van Home, first President of the Canadian Pacific 

Railway 389 

xix 



* /P C T / C 




Map of the Author's Route 



THE NEW NORTH 

CHAPTER I 

THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

"We are as mendicants who wait 
Along the roadside in the sun. 
Tatters of yesterday and shreds 
Of morrow clothe us every one. 

'And some are dotards, who believe 
And glory in the days of old ; 
While some are dreamers, harping .still 
Upon an unknown age of gold. 

"O foolish ones, put by your care ! 

Where wants are many, joys are few; 
And at the wilding springs of peace, 
God keeps an open house for you. 

"But there be others, happier few, 

The vagabondish sons of God, 
Who know the by-ways and the flowers, 
And care not how the world may plod." 

Isn't it Riley who says, "Ef you want something, an' 
jest dead set a-longin' fer it with both eyes wet, and tears 
won't bring it, why, you try sweat" ? Well, we had tried 
sweat and longing for two years, with planning and hoping 
and the saving of nickels, and now we are off! 

Shakespeare makes his man say, "I will run as far as 

I 



THE NEW NORTH 

God has any ground," and that is our ambition. We are 
to travel north and keep on going till we strike the Arctic, 
— straight up through Canada. Most writers who 
traverse The Dominion enter it at the Eastern portal and 







Sir Wilfred Laurier 



travel west by the C. P. R., following the line of least re- 
sistance till they reach the Pacific. Then they go back to 
dear old England and tell the world all about Canada, their 
idea of the half-continent being Euclid's conception of a 
straight line, "length without breadth." 



• 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

But Canada has a third dimension, a diameter that cuts 
through the Belt of Wheat and Belt of Fur, beginning 
south at the international boundary and ending where in 
his winter-igloo the Arctic Eskimo lives and loves after 
his kind and works out his own destiny. This diameter 
we are to follow. To what end? Not, we hope, to come 
back like him who went from Dan to Beersheba to say 
"All is barren," but to come near to the people, our fellow- 
Britons, in this transverse section of a country bigger than 
Europe. We want to see what they are doing, these Trail- 
Blazers of Commerce, who, a last vedette, are holding the 
silent places, awaiting that multitude whose coming foot- 
steps it takes no prophet to hear. 

We will take the great waterways, our general direction 
being that of all the world-migrations. Colonization in 
America has followed the trend of the great rivers, and it 
has ever been northward and westward, — till you and I 
have to look southward and eastward for the graves of 
our ancestors. The sons and grandsons of those who con- 
quered the St. Lawrence and built on the Mississippi have 
since occupied the shores of the Red, the Assiniboine, and 
the Saskatchewan. They are laying strong hands upon 
the Peace, and within a decade will be platting townships 
on the Athabasca, the Mackenzie, and the Slave. 

There has always been a West. For the Greeks there 
was Sicily; Carthage was the western outpost of Tyre; 
and young Roman patricians conquered Gaul and specu- 
lated in real estate on the sites of London and Liverpool. 
But the West that we are entering upon is the Last West, 
the last unoccupied frontier under a white man's sky. 
When this is staked out, pioneering shall be no more, or 

3 



THE NEW NORTH 

Amundsen must find for us a dream-continent in Beaufort 
Sea. 

Kipling speaks of "a route unspoiled of Cook's," and we 
have found it. Going to the office of Thos. Cook & Son, 
in Chicago, with a friend who had planned a Mediter- 
ranean tour, I gently said, "I wonder if you can give me 
information about a trip I am anxious to take this sum- 
mer." The young man smiled and his tone was that 
which we accord to an indulged child, "I guess we can. 
Cook & Son give information on most places." "Very 
well," I said, "I want to go from Chicago to the Arctic by 
the Mackenzie River, returning home by the Peace and 
the Lesser Slave. Can you tell me how long it will take, 
what it will cost, and how I make my connections?" 
He was game; he didn't move an eyebrow, but went off to 
the secret recesses in the back office to consult "the main 
guy," "the chief squeeze," "the head push," "the big 
noise." Back they came together with a frank laugh, 
"Well, Miss Cameron, I guess you've got us. Cook's have 
no schedule to the Arctic that way." They were able, 
however, to give accurate information as to how one should 
reach Hudson Bay, with modes of travel, dates, and ap- 
proximate cost. But this journey for another day. 

Leaving Chicago one sizzling Sunday in mid-May, we 
(my niece and I) stop for a day to revel in bird and blos- 
soms at Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, then silently in 
the night cross the invisible parallel of 49 where the 
eagle perches and makes amorous eyes at the beaver. 

With the Polar Ocean as ultimate goal, we cannot help 
thinking how during the last generation the Arctic Circle 
has been pushed steadily farther north. Forty years ago 

4 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

Minneapolis and St. Paul were struggling trading-posts, 
and all America north of them was the range of the buf- 
falo and the Indian. Then Fort Garry (Winnipeg) be- 
came Farthest North. Before starting, I had dug out 
from the Public Library the record of a Convention of 
Wheat-Growers who, fifteen years ago in Chicago, delib- 
erately came to the conclusion (and had the same en- 
grossed on their minutes) that "Our Northern tier of 
States is too far north to successfully grow wheat." For 
years Winnipeg was considered the northern limit of 
wheat-growth, the Arctic Circle of endeavour. Then that 
line of limitation was pushed farther back until it is Ed- 
monton-on-the-Saskatchewan that is declared "Farthest 
North." To-day we are embarking on a journey which is 
to reach two thousand miles due north of Edmonton ! 

In the train between Minneapolis and Winnipeg an old 
man with a be-gosh beard looks worth while. We tell him 
where we are going, and he is all interest. He remembers 
the time when Montreal merchants wishing to reach Fort 
Garry had to bend down by way of St. Paul to gain their 
goal. These were the days of Indian raids and bloody 
treachery. "But," the old chap says, "the Hudson's Bay 
people always played fa'r and squar' with the Injuns. 
Even in them days the Injun knowed that crossed flag and 
what it stood for. I mind one Englishman and his wife 
who had come from Montreal to St. Paul in an ox-cart. 
The whole plains was covered with sneakin' red cusses on 
the war-path. But that darned Britisher was stubborn- 
set on pullin' out that night for Fort Garry, with his wife 
and kid, and what did the cuss do but nail a blame little 
Union Jack on his cart, poke the goad in his ox, and hit 

5 



THE NEW NORTH 

the trail ! My God, I kin still see the old ox with that bit 
of the British Empire, wiggling out of St. Paul at sun- 
down. And the cuss got there all right, too, though we 



I 




Earl Grey, Governor-General of Canada 

was all wearing crape beforehand for his sweet-faced 
wife." This incident was not unique. In the early '6o's 
an English curate, afterwards to be known to the world as 
Bishop Bompas, passed north through St. Cloud on his 

6 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

way from England to the Arctic. When the Sioux were 
reported on the war-path, Mr. Bompas improvised a Union 
Jack with bits of coloured clothing and fastened it on the 
first ox-cart of his cavalcade. Seeing this, the hostile 
Sioux turned bridle and rode away; and, protected by the 
flag of the clustered crosses, the Gospel-cart passed on. 

What Cook & Son failed to supply, the Hudson's Bay 
Company in Winnipeg furnished. This concern has been 
foster-mother to Canada's Northland for two hundred and 
thirty-nine years. Its foundation reaches back to when 
the Second Charles ruled in England, — an age when men 
said not "How cheap?" but "How good?", not "How 
easy?" but "How well?" The Hudson's Bay Company 
is to-day the Cook's Tourist Company of the North, the 
Coutts' Banking concern, and the freshwater Lloyd's. No 
man or woman can travel with any degree of comfort 
throughout Northwest America except under the kindly 
aegis of the Old Company. They plan your journey for 
you, give you introductions to their faqtors at the differ- 
ent posts, and sell you an outfit guiltless of the earmarks 
of the tenderfoot. Moreover, they will furnish you with 
a letter of credit which can be transmuted into bacon and 
beans and blankets, sturgeon-head boats, guides' services, 
and succulent sow-belly, at any point between Fort Chimo 
on Ungava Bay and Hudson's Hope-on-the-Peace, be- 
tween Winnipeg-on-the-Red and that point in the Arctic 
where the seagull whistles over the whaling-ships at 
Herschel. 

For a railroad station, the wall-notices in the baggage 
room of the Canadian Northern at Winnipeg are unique. 
Evidently inspired for the benefit of employes, they give 

7 



THE NEW NORTH 

the incoming traveller a surprise. Here they are as we 
copied them down : 

Let all things be done decently and in order. 

I Cor. xiv, 40. 
Be punctual, be regular, be clean. 
Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. 
Be obliging and kind one to another. 
Let no angry word be heard among you 
Be not fond of change. (Sic.) 
Be clothed with humility, not finery. 
Take all things by the smooth handle. 
Be civil to all, but familiar with few. 

As we smile over this Canadian substitute for the 
American, — 

"Hang on to your hand-baggage. Don't let 
go your overcoat. Thieves are around," 

the baggage-master with a strong Scottish accent says 
over our shoulders, "Guid maxims, and we live up 
t' them!" 

A big Irish policeman is talking to a traveller who 
has stepped off a transcontinental train, and who asks 
with a drawl, "What makes Winnipeg?" Scraping a 
lump of mud from his boot-heel, the Bobby holds it out. 
"This is the sordid dhross and filthy lucre which keeps our 
nineteen chartered banks and their one and twenty sub- 
urban branches going. Just beyant is one hundred mil- 
lion acres of it, and the dhirty stuff grows forty bushels of 
wheat to the acre. Don't be like the remittance man 
from England, sorr," with a quizzical look at the checked 
suit of his interlocutor, "shure they turn the bottom of their 

8 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

trowsies up so high that divil of the dhross sticks to 
them!" As Mulcahey winks the other eye, we drift out 
into this "Buckle of the Wheat-Belt." 

What has the policeman's hard wheat done for Winni- 
peg? Well, it gave her a building expansion, a year ago, 
greater than that of any other city of her population in 
America. One year has seen in Western Canada an in- 
crease in crop area under the one cereal of winter wheat of 
over one hundred and fifty per cent, a development abso- 
lutely unique in the world's history. 

Winnipeg, having acquired the growing habit, expands 
by leaps and bounds. No city on the continent within the 
last thirty-three years has had such phenomenal growth. 
In 1876 the population was 6,000; it now counts 150,000 
souls. This city is the greatest grain-market in the Brit- 
ish Empire, and from it radiate twenty-two distinct pairs 
of railway tracks. Architects have in preparation plans 
for fifteen million dollars' worth of buildings during the 
coming year. The bank clearings in 1903 were $246,- 
108,000; last year they had increased to $618,1 1 1,801 ; and 
a Winnipeg bank has never failed. Western Canada can- 
not grow without Winnipeg's reaping a benefit, for most 
of the inward and outward trade filters through here. 
During the spring months three hundred people a day 
cross the border from the United States. Before the year 
has closed a hundred thousand of them will have merged 
themselves into Western Canada's melting-pot, drawn by 
that strongest of lures — the lure of the land. And these 
hundred thousand people do not come empty-handed. It 
is estimated that they bring with them in settlers' effects 
and cash one thousand dollars each, thus adding in port- 
3 9 



THE NEW NORTH 

able property to the wealth of Western Canada one hun- 
dred million dollars. In addition they bring the personal 
producing-factor, an asset which cannot be measured in 
figures — the "power of the man." 

Not only from the United States do Winnipeg's citizens 
come. This City of the Plains is a human mosaic to which 




Winnipeg, the Buckle of the Wheat-Belt 

finished pattern every nation of the Old World furnishes 
its patine. The Bible Society of Winnipeg sells Bibles 
printed in fifty-one different languages — Armenian, 
Arabic, Burmese, Cree, Esth, Korean, Persian, Sanscrit, 
Slavonic, Tinne, Urdu, Yiddish, and nine and thirty other 
tongues. It is to be supposed that some buy their Bible 
not because it is the Bible but in order to feast the eye on 
the familiar characters of the home tongue. So would 

10 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

Robinson Crusoe have glutted his sight with a copy of the 
London Times, could the goat have committed the an- 
achronism of digging one out from among the flotsam in 
the kelp. 

Going into a hardware store to get a hatchet and a cop- 
per kettle, we cajole the proprietor into talking shop. He 
has orders for six hundred steam-ploughs to be delivered 
to farmers the coming season. We estimate that each of 
these will break at least fifteen hundred acres during the 
six months that must elapse before we hope to return to 
Winnipeg. This will make nearly a million acres to be 
broken by the steam-ploughs sold by this one concern, and 
practically the whole number will be used for breaking wild 
land. A peep into the ledger of this merchant shows in 
the list of his plough-buyers Russian names and unpro- 
nounceable patronymics of the Finn, the Doukhobor, and 
the Buckowinian. It is to be hoped that these will drive 
furrows that look straighter than their signatures do. 
"But they are all good pay," the implement-man says. 
Looking at the red ploughs, we see in each a new chapter 
to be written in Canada's history. The page of the book 
is the prairie, as yet inviolate, and running out into flow- 
ers to the skyline. The tools to do the writing are these 
ploughs and mowers and threshers, the stout arms of men 
and of faith-possessed women. It is all new and splendid 
and hopeful and formative ! 

We get in Winnipeg another picture, one that will re- 
main with us till we reach the last Great Divide. At the 
Winnipeg General Hospital, Dr. D. A. Stewart says to 
us, "Come, I want to show you a brave chap, one who has 
fallen by the way." We find this man, Alvin Carlton, 

ii 



THE NEW NORTH 

stretched on a cot. "Tell him that you are going into the 
land of fur," whispers the doctor, "he has been a trapper 
all his life." 

Crossing soft ice on the Lake of the Woods, Carlton 
broke through, and his snow-shoes pinned him fast. When 
dragged out he had suffered so with the intense cold that 
he became partially paralysed and was sent here to the 
hospital. Hard luck? Yes, but the misfortune was tem- 
pered with mercy. Within these walls Carlton met a 
doctor full of the mellow juice of life, — a doctor with a 
man's brain, the sympathy of a woman, and the heart of a 
little child. The trapper, as we are introduced to him, has 
one leg and both hands paralysed, with just a perceptible 
sense of motion remaining in the other leg. His vocal 
cords are so affected that the sounds he makes are to us 
absolutely unintelligible, more like the mumblings of an 
animal than the speech of a man. Between patient and 
doctor, a third man entered the drama, — Mr. Grey, a con- 
valescent. Appointed special nurse to the trapper, Grey 
studied him as a mother studies her deficient child, and 
now was able, to our unceasing marvel, to translate these 
sad mouthings of Carlton into human speech. 

Who is this patient? A man without friends or in- 
fluence, not attractive in appearance, more than distressing 
to listen to, — just one more worker thrown off from the 
gear of the rapidly-turning wheel of life. The consulting 
doctors agreed that no skill could perform a cure, could 
not even arrest the creeping death. Winnipeg is big and 
busy, and no corner of it more crowded than the General 
Hospital, no corps more overworked. Dr. Stewart had 
two men's work to do. He worked all day and was busy 

12 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

well into the night. A doctor's natural tendency is to see 
in each man that he ministers to merely "a case," a mani- 
festation of some disease to be watched and tabulated and 
ticked off into percentages. But in the Stewart-Carlton- 
Grey combination, Fate had thrown together three young 
men in whom the human part, the man element, loomed 
large. 

The doctor guessed that under that brave front the 
heart of the trapper was eating itself out for the cry of 
the moose, the smell of wood-smoke by twilight. We are 
happiest when we create. So he said to Carlton, "Did 
you ever write a story?" The head shook answer. 
"Well, why don't you try? You must know a lot, old 
chap, about out-door things, that nobody else knows. 
Think some of it out, and then dictate it to Grey here." 

The outcome was disappointing. The uncouth sounds, 
translated by Grey, were bald, bare, and stiff. Soon the 
stiffness worked off. With half-shut eyes Carlton lived 
again in the woods. He lifted the dewy branch of a tree 
and surprised the mother deer making the toilet of her 
fawn, saw the beaver busied with his home of mud and 
wattles, heard the coyote scream across the prairie edge. 
Easily the thought flowed, and the stuff that Grey handed 
in was a live story that breathed. In that brave heart the 
joy of the creator stirred, and with it that feeling which 
makes all endeavour worth while — the thought that some- 
body cares. A close observer at this stage of the game 
may read, too, on the face of Grey the kindly look that 
comes when we forget ourselves long enough to take the 
trouble to reach out for another man's viewpoint. 

Carlton's short stories, submitted to a publisher, were 

J 3 



THE NEW NORTH 

pronounced good, were accepted, and brought a cash re- 
turn. They struck a new note among the squabblings of 
the nature-fakers. Favourable comment came from those 
who read them, who, reading, knew naught of their three 
authors. Before this Carlton had never written a line 
for publication ; but he had been a true observer. He had 
felt, and was able to project himself into the minds of 
those living things he had seen and hunted. 

I leave the hospital cot with a strange lump forming in 
my throat, although every one around me, and the patient 
most of all, is gay and blithe. I say to Carlton, "I wish I 
could take your knowledge and your eyes with me into the 
North, there is so much I will miss because of my lack of 
knowledge." With Grey's kindly interpretation I get 
my answer, "You must take your own mind, your own 
eyes; you must see for yourself." 

During the last day in Winnipeg, while the Kid (like 
faithful Ariovistus) is looking after the impedimenta, I 
snatch half an hour to look in at the Royal Alexandra upon 
the reception which the Women's Canadian Club is tender- 
ing to Mrs. Humphry Ward. Rain-bespattered, short- 
skirted, and anchored with disreputable rubbers gluey 
with Winnipeg mud, I sit on the fringe of things, fairly 
intoxicated with the idea that we are off and this North 
trip no dream. Mrs. Sanford Evans presides with her 
usual savoir faire and ushers in the guest of the day, beau- 
tifully-gowned and gracious. 

Like a bolt from the blue came the summons from the 
president, and I, all muddy, am called to the seats of the 
mighty. I have never seen a more splendid aggregation 
of women than the members of the Winnipeg Canadian 

14 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

Club, tall, strong, alert, and full of initiative. To face 
them is a mental and moral challenge. I try to hide those 
muddy shoes of mine. The Winnipeg women are indul- 
gent, they make allowance for my unpresentable attire, 
and shower upon me cheery wishes for the success of my 
journey. Mrs. Humphry Ward calls attention to the lack 
of playgrounds in England. She wants to bring more 




The Canadian Women's Press Club 

fresh air and space to the crowded people of the Old World. 
I submit that my wish is the mathematical converse to 
hers. My great desire is to call attention to the great un- 
occupied lands of Canada, to induce people from the 
crowded centres of the Old World to use the fresh air of 
the New. 

To those who bid us good-bye at the train, the Kid and 
I yell exultantly, "All aboard for the Arctic Ocean and 
way ports !" 

15 



THE NEW NORTH 

A group of Galicians sitting by the curb, two mothers 
and seven small children, one a baby at the breast, make 
the last picture we see as the train pulls out. It was the 
end of their first day in Winnipeg. The fathers of the 
flock evidently were seeking work and had left their fam- 
ilies gazing through the portals of the strange new land. 
In the half-sad, altogether-brave lines on the young moth- 
ers' faces and their tender looks bent on the little ones 
we read the motive responsible for all migrations — "Bet- 
ter conditions for the babies." In the little fellows of 
seven or eight with their ill-fitting clothes and their dog- 
ged looks of determination one sees the makers of em- 
pire. Before a decade is past they will be active wheat- 
growers in their own right, making two grains grow 
where one grew before and so "deserving better of man- 
kind than the whole race of politicians put together." I 
think it was President Garfield who said, "I always feel 
more respect for a boy than for a man. Who knows what 
possibilities may be buttoned up under that ragged jacket ?" 
It doesn't take long for the foreigners to make good. A 
young Icelander, Skuli Johnson, of all the thousands of 
Winnipeg students, this year captured the coveted honor 
of the academic world — the Rhodes scholarship. 

We slip out of Winnipeg as the bells of St. Boniface 
ring the vespers from their turrets twain. Whittier, who 
never saw this quaint cathedral, has immortalized it in 
verse. The story is one of those bits of forgotten history 
so hard to get hold of in a day when Winnipeg measures 
its every thought in bushels and bullion. 

The settlers who came to Selkirk on the outskirts of 
present Winnipeg just a hundred years ago were sturdy 

16 



THE MENDICANTS REACH WINNIPEG 

Scots, weaned on the Psalms of David and the Shorter 
Catechism. There were English missionaries here and 
priests of the Church of Rome, but the disciples of John 
Knox wanted some one to expound Predestination to 
them. A religious ceremony performed by any man who 
was not a Presbyterian seemed scarcely binding. One old 
lady, speaking of the nuptials of her daughter, said, "I 
wudna have Janet marrit by the bishop. She maun wait 
till we can have a properly-ordained meenister." And he 
was coming. Even now he was floating in on the Red 
River with Indian and half-breed boatmen, having reached 
St. Paul from Scotland via the Atlantic seaboard some 
weeks before. 

When a Scot and an Indian get in a boat together, to 
use a Will Carleton phrase, "they do not teem with con- 
versational grace." Straight from Aberdeen, the young 
Dominee coming into Winnipeg little dreamed that the 
Church of Rome had established its Mission on the Red 
River decades ago. In fact, he knew as little about Can- 
ada as he did about Timbuctoo, and in his simplicity 
thought himself "the first that ever burst into that silent 
sea." When the evening breeze brought to his ears a 
muffled sound, he was in doubt how to place it. 

"Is it the clang of wild-geese? 

Is it the Indian's yell, 
That lends to the voice of the North-wind 
The tones of a far-off bell?" 

The Indian boatmen said nothing, but thought deep, 
like the Irishman's parrot. 



17 



THE NEW NORTH 

"The voyageur smiles as he listens 
To the sound that grows apace ; 
Well he knows the vesper ringing 
Of the bells of St. Boniface." 

Once the young Scot had reached his flock, he wrote 
back to a friend in the States telling how he came across 
on the edsre of the wilderness 



i &' 



"The bells of the Roman Mission, 
That call from their turrets twain 
To the boatmen on the river, 
To the hunter on the plain." 

That friend was a fellow-townsman of the "Quaker 
Poet." The story was told to Whittier and inspired the 
lines of The Red River J r oyageur. 



CHAPTER II 

WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

"To the far-flung fenceless prairie 

Where the quick cloud-shadows trail, 
To our neighbor's barn in the offing 
And the line of the new-cut rail ; 
To the plough in her league-long furrow." 

— Rudyard Kipling. 

Place a pair of dividers with one leg on Winnipeg and 
the other leg at Key West, Florida. Then swing the 
lower leg to the northwest, and it will not reach the limit 
of good agricultural land. 

From Winnipeg to Edmonton, roughly speaking, is a 
thousand miles, and two railway lines are open to us, — 
the Canadian Pacific and the Canadian Northern. We go 
by the former route and return in the autumn by the lat- 
ter. 

Pulling out from Winnipeg, we enter a prairie wheat- 
field one thousand miles long and of unknown width, into 
which the nations of the world are pouring. "The sleep- 
ing nation beyond," is what General Sherman in a mo- 
ment of pique once called Canada. The sleeping giant 
has awakened. We are on the heels of the greatest eco- 
nomic trek this world has ever seen. The historian of to- 
morrow will rank it with the world migrations. 

The flourishing centres of Portage la Prairie, Brandon 
with its Experimental Farm, Regina, the headquarters of 

l 9 



THE NEW NORTH 

the Mounted Police, Moose Jaw, and Medicine Hat are 
passed, and with these the new, raw towns in the tar-paper 
stage, towns that smell of sawdust, naked stand of paint. 
Never in the world's history did towns spring into life as 
these do. To-day the wind on the prairie, to-morrow the 
sharp conversation of the hammer on the nail-head, next 
week the implement warehouse, the tent hotel, the little 
cluster of homes. In England it takes a bishop to make a 
city, but here the nucleus needed is a wheat elevator, red 
against the setting sun. 

The ploughs that we saw in Winnipeg are at work here 
among the buffalo bones and the spring anemones. As 
day breaks we catch a glimpse of a sunbonneted mother 
and her three little kiddies. An ox is their rude coadjutor, 
and through the flower-sod they cut their first furrow. It 
is the beginning of a new home. Involuntarily one's mind 
jumps to the crowded cities of the Old World with their 
pale-cheeked children and fetid alleyways. Surely in 
bringing the workless man of the Old World to the man- 
less work of the New, the Canadian Government and the 
transportation companies are doing a bit of God's work. 

Half way between Winnipeg and the Pacific we reach 
Calgary, breezy, buoyant Calgary, the commercial metrop- 
olis of the foothills, already a busy mart and predestined 
to be the distributing point for many railroads. The big- 
gest man-made thing in Calgary is the C. P. R. irrigation 
works, the largest on this continent. The area included 
in the irrigation block is twice as big as the Island of Porto 
Rico and one-eighth the size of England and Wales; and 
the ultimate expenditure on the undertaking will reach the 
five million mark. 

20 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

Calgary is the centre of a country literally flowing with 
milk and honey and fat things. The oil-fields of Pincher 
Creek, with their rich promise of becoming a second 
Pennsylvania, are contiguous to the city. The winter 
wheat grown in Southern Alberta was awarded first prize 
and gold medal at the World's Fair in Oregon in 1905. 
The hackney carriage horses which took first prize at the 
last Montreal and New York horse-fairs were foaled and 
raised near Calgary. If we were to continue going due 
west from this point, all the scenic glories of the Rocky 
Mountains would be ours — seventy Switzerlands in one. 
But that journey must stand over for another day, with 
the journey to Prince Rupert, the ocean terminus of the 
Grand Trunk Pacific. 

Turning sharply to the north, we travel two hundred 
miles, and draw into where Edmonton, the capital of Al- 
berta, sits smiling on the banks of her silver Saskatche- 
wan. As he sees us digging out our tents and dunnage, 
the porter asks, "Then yer not comin' back?" "No." 
"You are goin' to the North Pole, then, the place you wuz 
hollerin' fer!" 

With the exception of Victoria, Edmonton has the most 
charming location of all cities of Western Canada. High 
Hope stalks her streets. There is a spirit of initiative and 
assuredness in this virile town, a culture and thoughtful- 
ness in her people, expectancy in the very air. It is the 
city of contrasts ; the ox-cart dodges the automobile ; in the 
track of French heel treads the moccasin; the silk hat sa- 
lutes the Stetson. 

Edmonton is the end of steel. Three lines converge 
here: the Canadian Northern, the Canadian Pacific, and 

21 



THE NEW NORTH 

the Grand Trunk Pacific. The Canadian Northern ar- 
rived first, coming in four years ago. Now that Edmon- 
ton has arrived, it seems the most natural thing in the 
world that there should have sprung up on the Saskatche- 
wan this rich metropolis, anticipating for itself a future ex- 
pansion second to no city in commercial Canada. But 
some one had to have faith and prescience before Edmon- 
ton got her start, and the god-from-the-machine was the 
Canadian Northern, in other words, William Mackenzie 
and D. D. Mann. Individuals and nations as they reap a 



harvest are apt to forget the hands that sowed the seed in 
faith, nothing doubting. When this railroad went into 
Edmonton, as little was known of the valley of the Sas- 
katchewan as is known now of the valley of the Peace. 
Without exception, Canadian men of letters go to other 
countries for recognition, but not so all our men of deeds. 
Mackenzie and Mann, "the Brains of a Trans-Conti- 
nental," stayed in Canada and put their genius to work 
here. The Canadian Northern is the product of Canadian 
minds and Canadian money. 

We walk Edmonton streets for ten days and see neither 

22 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

an old man nor an old woman. The government and the 
business interests are in the hands of young people who 
have adopted modern methods of doing things ; single tax 
is the basis of taxation; the city owns its public utilities, 
including an interurban street railroad, electric lighting 
plant, water-works, and the automatic telephone. Mr. C. 
W. Cross, the Attorney-General of Alberta, is the youngest 
man in Canada to hold that high office. During the first 
session of the first legislature of this baby province less 
than three years ago, an enabling act was passed for a uni- 




of Edmonton 

versity. Nowhere else have I been sensible of such a 
feeling of united public-spiritedness as obtains here. 

Down in the river valley are hundreds of people living 
under canvas, not because they are poor but because build- 
ing contractors cannot keep pace with the demand for 
homes. As we pass these tents, we are rude enough to 
look in. Most of them are furnished with telephones and 
the city water ; here a bride bends over a chafing dish ; an- 
other glance discloses an oil-painting that was once shown 
in the Royal Academy. From the next tent float the 
strains of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and, as we stop 

23 



THE NEW NORTH 

to listen, a gentleman and his wife step out. An auto 
picks them up and off they whirl to Jasper Avenue. The 
Lord o' the Tents of Shem disappears into his bank and 
Milady drives on to the Government house to read before 
the Literary Club a paper on Browning's Saul. To the 
tenderfoot from the South it is all delightfully disconcert- 
ing — oxen and autos and Browning on the Saskatchewan ! 

The Sunday before we leave Edmonton I find another 
set of tents, put up by the Immigration Department, where 
East-End Londoners are housed pending their going out 
upon the land. In the first call I make I unearth a baby 
who rejoices in the name of Hester Beatrice Cran. "H. 
B. C," I remark, "aren't you rather infringing on a right, 
taking that trade-mark?" Quick came the retort, "Ho! 
If she gets as good a 'old on the land as the 'Udson's Bay 
Company 'as, she'll do!" 

Another lady in the next tent proudly marshalled her 
olive branches. "D'isy and the baiby were born in the 
Heast Hend. They're Henglish; please God they'll make 
good Canaidians. They're tellin' me, miss, there'll be five 
'undred more of us on the 'igh seas comin' out to Hed- 
monton from the Heast Hend, all poor people like our- 
selves. I often wonder w'y they don't bring out a few 
dukes to give the country a touch of 'igh life — it's very 
plain 'ere." 

By the first day of June we have our kit complete and 
are ready to leave. We have tried to cut everything down 
to the last ounce, but still the stuff makes a rather formid- 
able array. What have we? Tent, tent-poles, type- 
writer, two cameras, two small steamer-trunks, bedding 
(a thin mattress with waterproof bottom and waterproof 

24 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

extension-flaps and within this our two blankets), a flour- 
bag - or "Hudson's Bay suit-case" (containing tent-pegs, 
hatchet, and tin wash-basin), two raincoats, a tiny bag 
with brush and comb and soap — and last, but yet first, the 
kodak films wrapped in oilcloth and packed in biscuit- 




The Golden Fleece of Saskatchewan 

tins. The bits of impedimenta look unfamiliar as we take 
our first inventory, but we are to come to know them soon 
by their feel in the dark, to estimate to an ounce the weight 
of each on many a lonely portage. 

At seven in the morning the stage pulls up for us, and it 
rains — no gentle sizzle-sozzle, but a sod-soaker, yea a 

4 25 



THE NEW NORTH 

gully-washer ! The accusing newness of those raincoats 
is to come off at once. Expansive Kennedy looks askance 
at the tenderfoots who climb over his wheel. His 
Majesty's Royal Mail Stage sifts through the town pick- 
ing up the other victims. We are two big stage-loads, our 
baggage marked for every point between Edmonton and 
the Arctic Ocean. Every passenger but ourselves looks 
forward to indefinite periods of expatriation in the silent 
places. We alone are going for fun. Our one care is to 
keep those precious cameras dry. This is the beginning 
of a camera nightmare which lasts six months until we 
again reach Chicago. 

And the fellow-passengers? Law is represented, and 
medicine, and the all-powerful H. B. Co. With us is Mr. 
Angus Brabant going in on his initial official trip in charge 
of H. B. interests in the whole Mackenzie River District, 
and with him two cadets of The Company. On the 
seat behind us sit a Frenchman reading a French novel, 
a man from Dakota, and a third passenger complain- 
ing of a camera "which cost fifty pounds sterling" that 
somehow has fallen by the way. Sergeant Anderson, 
R. N. W. M. P., with his wife and two babies are in the 
other stage. 

Kennedy, the driver, is a character. Driving in and 
out and covering on this one trail twelve thousand miles 
every year, he is fairly soaked with stories of the North 
and Northmen. The other stage is driven by Kennedy's 
son, who, tradition says, was struck by lightning when he 
was just forgetting to be a boy and beginning to be a man. 
Dwarfed in mind and body, he makes a mild-flavoured 
pocket-edition of Quilp. 

26 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

The roads are a quagmire. The querulous voice of the 
man who lost his camera claims our attention. "I thought 
I would be able to get out and run behind and pick flow- 
ers." Turning and introducing ourselves, we find the 
troubled one to be an English doctor going north off his 
own bat with the idea of founding a hospital for sick 
Indians on the Arctic Circle. 




Irrigation Ditch, Calgary, Alberta 

The girlish figure of a teacher struggling through the 
awful mud in gum-boots indicates that we have not 
travelled beyond the range of the little red schoolhouse. 
Stray wee figures splashing their way schoolward look 
dreary enough, and I seem to hear the monotonous drone 
of "seven times nine," "the mountains of Asia," "the 
Tudor sovereigns with dates of accession," and other 

27 



THE NEW NORTH 

things appertaining to "that imperial palace whence I 
came." All the summer afterwards, when mosquitoes are 
plenty and food scarce, a backward thought to this teacher 
making muddy tracks toward the well of English unde- 
nted, brings pleased content. 

At noon it clears, and as we "make tea" at Sturgeon 




A Waldorf-Astoria on the Prairie's Edge 



Creek (the Namao Sepee of the Indians), the first of the 
"stopping-places" or Waldorf-Astorias of the wilderness, 
the Doctor has his will and gathers violets, moccasin 
flowers, and the purple dodccatlicon. As we pass Lily 
Lake he remarks, "This reminds me of the Duke of Nor- 
folk's place at Arundel; it is just like this." South Dakoty 
returns, "I don't know him." 

Here and there we pass clusters of Galician huts. In- 

28 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

stead of following the line of least resistance in the fertile 
plains to the south, these people, the Mark Tapleys of the 
prairies, choose cheap land up here for the pleasure of con- 
quering it and "coining out strong." They are a frugal 
people, with a fondness for work, a wholesome horror of 
debt, and the religious instinct strongly insistent. Off on 
a hillside near each little settlement a naked cross extends 
its arms. These are their open-air churches, and in all 
weathers, men, women, and children gather at the foot of 
the cross to worship the God of their fathers. By and by, 
when the soil has yielded to their labours, with their own 
hands will they build a church and without debt it will be 
dedicated. The idea of raising an imposing church and 
presenting God with the mortgage does not appeal to the 
Galician. 

The clean sheets at "Eggie's," the second stopping- 
place, are attractive, and we sleep the sleep of the just. 
We acknowledge with inward shame that two years of 
city life have given us the soft muscles of the chee-chaco; 
we'll have to harden up a bit if we are to reach that far- 
away ocean. 

Next day, midway between Edmonton and Athabasca 
Landing, we water our horses at the Tautinau. We are 
standing at the Height of Land, the watershed between 
the Saskatchewan and the Athabasca. This little ridge 
where the harebells grow divides the drops of rain of the 
noon-day shower. Some of these drops, by way of the 
Saskatchewan, Lake Winnipeg, and Hudson Bay, will 
reach the Atlantic. Others, falling into the Athabasca, 
will form part of that yellow-tinged flood which, by way of 

29 



THE NEW NORTH 

Great Slave Lake and the mighty Mackenzie, carries its 
tribute to the Frozen Ocean. These last are the drops we 
follow. 

To save the horses we walk the hills, and I try to match 
giant steps with Sergeant Anderson. Kennedy, Junior, 
joins us and has a knotty point to settle regarding "the 
gentleman wot murdered the man." It is hard to induce 
a Mounted Policeman to talk. However, to be striding 
Athabasca Trail with the hero of the Hayward-King mur- 
der-trial is too good an opportunity to lose, and, reluctantly 
rendered, bit by bit the story comes out. 

Most people looking at a map of Northwest Canada 
would think it a safe wilderness for a live man or a dead 
man to disappear in with no questions asked. In reality, 
it is about the worst place in America in which to commit 
a crime and hope to go unpunished. 

In September, 1904, the Indians reported to the Mounted 
Police that they had seen two white men in the early sum- 
mer, and that afterwards one man walked alone, and was 
now at Lesser Slave. An observant Cree boy added, 
'The dog won't follow that other white fellow any more." 
Sergeant Anderson, going to their last camp, turned over 
the ashes and found three hard lumps of flesh and a small 
piece of skull bone. Convinced that murder had been 
done, he arrested the suspected man and sent him to Fort 
Saskatchewan for trial. No one knew the identity of 
either the dead man or the living. In front of the old 
camp-fire was a little slough or lake, and this seemed a 
promising place to look for evidence. Sergeant Ander- 
son hired Indian women to wade in the ooze, feeling with 
their toes for any hard substance. In this way were se- 

30 



WINNIPEG TO ATHABASCA LANDING 

cured a sovereign-case and a stick-pin of unusual make. 
The lake was systematically drained and yielded a shoe 
with a broken-eyed needle sticking in it. Sifting the ashes 
of the camp-fire and examining them with a microscope, 
Anderson discovered the eye of the broken needle and thus 
established a connection between the camp with its burnt 
flesh and the exhibits from the lake. The maker of the 
stick-pin in London, England, was cabled to by the 
Canadian Government, and a Mr. Hayward summoned to 
come from there to identify the trinkets of his murdered 
brother. A cheque drawn by the dead Hayward in favour 
of King came to the surface in a British Columbia bank. 
Link by link the chain of evidence grew. 

It took eleven months for Sergeant Anderson to get his 
case in shape. Then he convoyed forty Indian witnesses 
two hundred and fifty miles from Lesser Slave to Edmon- 
ton to tell what they knew about the crime committed in the 
silent places. The evidence was placed before the jury, 
and the Indians returned to their homes. A legal tech- 
nicality cropped up and the trial had to be repeated. Once 
more the forty Indians travelled from Lesser Slave to re- 
peat their story. The result was that Charles King of 
Utah was found guilty of the murder of Edward Hayward 
and paid the death penalty. 

This trial cost the Canadian Government over $30,000, 
— all to avenge the death of one of the wandering units to 
be found in every corner of the frontier, one unknown pros- 
pector. Was it worth while? Did it pay? Yes, it paid. 
It is by such object-lessons that to Indian and white alike 
is forced home the truth that God's law, "Thou shalt not 
kill," is also the law of Britain and of Canada. 

31 



THE NEW NORTH 

We are still on foot, when a cry from the Kid hurries 
us to the hilltop. Reaching the crest, we catch our 
breaths. Down below lies the little village of "The Land- 
ing." That sparkling flood beyond proves the Athabasca 
to be a live, northward-trending river, a river capable of 
carrying us with it, and no mere wiggly line on a map. 



CHAPTER III 

ATHABASCA LANDING 

"I am the land that listens, I am the land that broods ; 

Steeped in eternal beauty, crystalline waters and woods ; 

I wait for the men who will win me — and I will not be won in 

a day ; 
And I will not be won by weaklings, subtle, suave and mild. 
But by men with the hearts of vikings, and the simple faith of 

a child." 

— Robert Service. 

Athabasca Landing, a funnel through which percolates 
the whole trade between the wheat-belt and the Arctic, is 




Athabasca Landing 

the true gateway of the North. Seeing our baggage 
tucked away in the bar-room of the Grand Union Hotel, 

33 



THE NEW NORTH 

and snatching a hasty supper, we walk down to the river, 
its edges still encrusted with fragments of winter ice. It 
is an incomparable sunset, the light a veritable spilt spec- 
trum, spreading itself with prodigality over the swift river. 

The Athabasca, after dipping to the south, here takes a 
sudden northward bend. Its source is in the crest of the 
continent far back in the Committee's Punch-Bowl of the 
Rockies, the general trend of the river being northeasterly. 
It is the most southerly of the three great tributaries of the 
mighty Mackenzie, and from its source in Rockies to em- 
bouchure in Athabasca Lake it is about seven hundred and 
seventy-five miles long; through a wooded valley two miles 
wide it runs with perhaps an average width of two hun- 
dred and fifty yards. 

We are in latitude 55 ° North, and between us and the 
Arctic lies an unknown country, which supports but a few 
hundred Indian trappers and the fur-traders of the Ancient 
Company in their little posts, clinging like swallows' nests 
to the river banks. The wheat-plains to the south of us 
are so fertile and accessible that the tide of immigration 
has stopped south of where we stand. But that there 
stretches beyond us a country rich in possibilities we know, 
and one day this land, unknown and dubbed "barren" be- 
cause unknown, will support its teeming millions. Chi- 
merical? Why so? 

Parallels of latitude are great illuminators. When we 
run this line of 55 westward what do we strike in Asia? 
The southern boundary of the Russian Province of 
Tobolsk. Superimpose a map of that Province on a map 
of Canada and we find that the great Mackenzie water- 
way which we are to follow cuts Tobolsk almost directly 

34 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

through the centre. In the year 1900, Russian Tobolsk 
produced twenty-one million bushels of grain, grazed two 
and a half million head of live stock, exported one and 
a half million dollars' worth of butter, and supported a 
population of one and a half million souls. There is not 
one climatic condition obtaining in the Asiatic Province 
that this similar section of Canada which we are about to 
enter does not enjoy. 

Off a little jetty some lads are fishing. There is a 
camaraderie felt by all fishermen, and soon I have a rod 
and access to the chunk of moose-meat which is the com- 
munity bait. Within half an hour, rejoicing in a string of 
seventeen chub and grayling, we wend our way back to the 
little village. The elements that compose it? Here we 
have a large establishment of the Hudson's Bay Company, 
an Anglican and a Roman Mission, a little public school, 
a barracks of the Northwest Mounted Police, a post office, 
a dozen stores, a reading-room, two hotels, and a black- 
smith shop, and for population a few whites leavening a 
host of Cree-Scots half-breeds. 

. Athabasca Landing is part of the British Empire. But 
English is at a discount here ; Cree and French and a mix- 
ture of these are spoken on all sides. The swart boat- 
men are the most interesting feature of the place, — tall, 
silent, moccasined men, followed at the heel by ghostlike 
dogs. From this point north dogs are the beasts of bur- 
den ; the camel may be the ship of the desert, but the dog is 
the automobile of the silences. The wise missionary 
translates his Bible stories into the language of the lati- 
tude. As Count von Hammerstein says, "What means a 
camel to a Cree? I tell him it is a moose that cannot go 

35 



THE NEW NORTH 

through a needle's eye." The Scriptural sheep and goats 
become caribou and coyotes, and the celestial Lamb is 
typified by the baby seal with its coat of shimmering white- 
ness. Into the prohibition territory that stretches north 
of this no liquor can be taken except by a permit signed 
by an Attorney-General of Canada, and then only "for 
medicinal purposes." By an easy transferring of epithets, 







#: 




■ 


iAJ, 


IE''. ■•» 




:JM\ *Q15H 








iiJ 


/ 






^k 






feai^ 








Wjjt^f 


r / V>j/ W^ 




' 



Necessity Knows No Law at Athabasca 

the term "permit" has come to signify the revivifying 
juice itself. 

One illusion vanishes here. We had expected to find 
the people of the North intensely interested in the affairs 
of the world outside, but as a rule they are not. There is 
no discussion of American banks and equally no mention 
of the wheat crop. The one conjecture round the bar and 
in the home is, "When will the rabbits run this year?" 

36 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

The rabbits in the North are the food of the lynx; cheap 
little bunny keeps the vital spark aglow in the bodies of 
those animals with richer fur who feed upon him. Every 
seven years an epidemic attacks the wild rabbits, and that 
year means a scarcity of all kinds of fur. As surely as 
wheat stands for bullion in the grain-belt, little Molly Cot- 
tontail is the currency of the North. 

It is at this point we join the Fur-Brigade of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company making its annual transport to the 
posts of the Far North, taking in supplies for trading 
material and bringing back the peltries obtained in barter 
during the previous winter. The big open scows, or 
"sturgeon-heads," which are to form our convoy have been 
built, the freight is all at The Landing, but for three days 
the half-breed boatmen drag along the process of loading, 
and we get our introduction to the word which is the key- 
note of the Cree character, — "Kee-am," freely translated, 
"Never mind," "Don't get excited," 'There's plenty of 
time," "It's all right," "It will all come out in the wash." 

When the present Commissioner of the Lludson's Bay 
Company entered office he determined to reduce chaos to 
a methodical exactness, and framed a time-table covering 
every movement in the northward traffic. When it was 
shown by the local representative to the Cree boatmen at 
The Landing, old Duncan Tremble, a river-dog on the 
Athabasca for forty years, looked admiringly at the 
printed slip and said, "Aye, aye; the Commissioner he 
makes laws, but the river he boss." It is only when ice is 
out and current serves that the brigade moves forward. 
Old Duncan knows seven languages, — English, French, 
Cree, Chipewyan, Beaver, Chinook, Montagnais, — he 

37 



THE NEW NORTH 

speaks seven languages, thinks in Cree, and prevaricates 
in them all. 



HYMNS 



hi the 
SYLLABIC CHARKCTGRS 

for tftc use of- 

THE CfiEE INDIANS 

in the 

DIOCESE OF ATHABASCA 




■t^ZS?* 



1901 



PRINTED AT 

sr matthew's mission 

^TH/VB/VSCA l/VNPING 

The Missionary Hymnal 

At the foot of the hill we visit the English parsonage, 
with its old-time sun-dial at the garden-gate. Within, 

38 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

we find what must surely be the farthest north printing- 
press. Here two devoted women have spent years of 

O^ X L(TD > dr'S b P 
L iPA" rd b P <PO(Tf)^ 

CL.A"' Calatiana I.. UO. 

'Jesu lover of my soul" S-7*S 

p t> acj^crp 

lb— r*°PVAJ9 N 

ra rr^vnor^ 

b^ t> CV« br-^ 

at «a*v*'ad a 

(T t? P ALPA N 
VbA'S- abr^> 

phr (r p Lrf* 

P 1 -? P P £rPA* 



for the Indians. 



their lives printing in Cree on a hand-press syllabic hymns 
and portions of the Gospel for the enlightenment of the 

39 



THE NEW NORTH 

Indians. We wander into the school where a young 
teacher is explaining to his uneasy disciples the intricacies 
of Present Worth and Compound Interest. Idly we won- 
der to what use these bare-footed half-Cree urchins will 
put their exact banking knowledge. 

Everywhere around us the wild flowers are a great joy; 
we hail with the gladness of released children the posies 
that sweetened childhood meadows — the dwarf cornel 
(Cornel Canadensis), dandelions, strawberry blossoms, 
wild roses, the pale wood-violet on its long stem, and 
amid these familiars the saskatoon or service-berry bushes, 
with blueberry vines, and viburnums of many kinds. On 
the street the natty uniforms of the Mounted Police are in 
evidence, and baseball has penetrated as far north as this. 
In the post office we read, 

"It is decided to hold sports on the first day of July. The Com- 
mittee promises a splendid programme,— horse-races, foot-races, 
football match, baseball game. There will also be prizes for the 
best piece of Indian fancy-work. Dancing will be in full swing 
in the evening. All welcome." 






■-,■ 



Opposite the hotel is a reading-room built by a Metho- 
dist parson who also made the furniture with his own 
hands; magazines, books, writing-material, games are 
available to all. This practical work of one man who 
accepted the responsibility of being his brother's keeper 
appealed to us. In a store near the hotel we see a Cree 
boatman purchasing a farewell present for his sweetheart. 
As he turns over the fancy articles, we have bad form 
enough to observe his choice. He selects a fine-tooth 
comb, for which he pays fifty cents, or as he calls it, "two 

40 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

skins," and asks, as he tucks it into his jerkin, if he can 
change it "if she doesn't like it." 

In the evening it rains, and the room assigned us be- 
comes a living illustration of the new word we have just 
learned, — "muskeg," a swamp. Putting the precious 
cameras on top of the bureau, we let the rest of the things 
swim at their pleasure. Starting with the rest of the 
unattached community of Athabasca Landing to go down 
to the pool-room, we catch sight of Dr. Sussex and the 
Cree priest, who have found a little oasis of their own 
around a big stove in the upper hall and, with chairs tilted 
back, are enjoying some portable hospitality from below. 
The doctor arises to escort us through the flood, and when 
I rally him about his liquid refreshment, he says, "Oh, I 
had lemonade." 

"I see. And the priest?" 

"He had— what he liked." 

If local colour and local smell is what we have come 
north for, we find it here. Mr. Brabant comes up with 
"I wonder if that bunch of nuns is going to get here in 
time to take scows with us," and we pass into the billiard- 
room and watch the game. The players gliding round in 
moccasins are all half-breeds. The exclamations are for 
the most part in Cree or bad French, and as I crowd in 
looking for some local terms all that I hear intelligible is, 
"That is damn close, I think me." 

For thirty-six hours on end it rains. That roof was 
full of surprises; you never knew where it would spring 
a fresh leak. One room is a little better than the rest, 
and we all gather there and make the best of it, — smok- 
ing, writing, telling yarns. A bumping noise from across 
5 41 



THE NEW NORTH 

the hall and the cry of a child startles us. It proves to 
be Sergeant Anderson's baby whose cradle has started 
afloat, and there is a general rush to rescue Moses from 
his bulrushes. Everybody is in good humour. 

As we calm the baby, South Dakota says "It reminds 
me of the Englishman and his musical bath." We demand 
the story. "Well, a rich American took a great liking 
to an Englishman he had been travelling with, and sent 
him for a birthday present a Yankee invention to set up 
in his country-house — a musical bath. As you turned on 
the spigot, the thing played a tune while you were wash- 
ing, and sort of relieved the tee-deum. The two gents 
met next Christmas in New York, and the Yankee he sez, 
'And how did you like the bath?' 'Oh, thank you very 
much, it was kind of you indeed, but I found it a little 
irksome standing all the time, you know.' 'Standing, what 
the blazes do you mean?' asked the Yankee. 'Well,' says 
the Britisher, 'the tune you furnished, you know, with the 
bawth, was God Save the King, and as soon as it began, 
you know, I had to stand, and it's rather tiresome taking 
your bawth standing, you know.' " 

Sergeant Joyce tells how at a Mounted Police dinner 
at Fort Saskatchewan a parson, who was a guest, in pro- 
posing a toast, facetiously advised his entertainers to have 
nothing to do with either a doctor or a lawyer. It was 
interesting to watch the parson's face when there arose 
to reply a lawyer and a doctor, each a constable in the 
rank and file. 

Mrs. Leslie Wood of Athabasca Landing adds her quota 
to the Tales of a Wayside Inn. We could have listened to 
her for a week and regretted neither the rain nor the 

42 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

waiting scows. As a girl she remembers being shocked 
at seeing men hold tin cups to the throats of newly- 
slaughtered buffalo, drinking with gusto the warm 
blood. 

"What are the two greatest things on earth?" Mrs. 
Wood, as a young girl, asked the dusky disciples of her 
Sunday School class. "The Queen and The Company," 
was the ready response. "And of these, which is the 
greater?" Little Marten-Tail rubbed one moccasin over 
the other, and the answer came thoughtfully in Cree, "The 
Company. The Queen sometimes dies, but The Company 
never dies." 

"The Company," of which the little girl spoke, "The 
Governor and Company of Adventurers trading into Hud- 
son's Bay," deriving its charter in 1670 from the Second 
Charles of England, is the oldest chartered concern in the 
world, with a present-day sphere of influence as large as 
Great Britain, France, Spain, and Germany combined. 
From lone Labrador to the Pacific littoral and from Winni- 
peg to the Frozen Ocean are scattered the two hundred 
and fifty fur-trading forts of this concern in charge of 
its two thousand strong silent servants. Last year it paid 
to its stockholders a profit of forty-five per cent on the 
invested capital, and for two hundred and thirty-nine con- 
secutive years it has been declaring dividends. The motto 
of the Company, Pro Pelle Cut cm, is prominently displayed 
at Athabasca Landing. Literally translated, the phrase 
means "Skin for skin" ; but why the promoters should 
have chosen as war-cry the words which Satan used when 
fighting with the Lord for the soul of Job, is not so ap- 
parent. 

43 



THE NEW NORTH 

As we watch the trading goods being carried in the 
rain from warehouse to scows, we think how, weaving its 
cross-Atlantic way through the centuries and joining the 
periwigged days of the Stuarts to this day, the one man- 
made thing that has persisted is this commerce-shuttle of 
the H. B. Co. 

In the days when The Company had its birth, the blind 
Milton was dictating his message and the liberated Bunyan 
preached the spoken word, the iniquitous Cabal Ministry 
was forming in England, and Panama was sacked by 
Morgan the buccaneer. New York merchants of Man- 
hattan met every Friday at noon on the bridge over the 
Broad Street Canal for barter, South Carolina was settled 
on the Ashley River, Virginia enacted that "all servants 
not being Christians, imported into this country by ship- 
ping shall be slaves," and her Governor, Sir William 
Berkeley, was inspired to exclaim piously, "I hope we shall 
have neither free schools nor printing these hundred years, 
for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sects 
into the world, and printing has divulged them. God keep 
us from both!" It was not until two years later that 
Addison was born, and that Marquette and Joliet sailed 
down the Mississippi, even as we now are essaying the 
Athabasca. 

Unique in commercial annals is the Royal Charter which 
gave, with power of life and death, to the Company of 
Gentlemen Adventurers, less than twenty in number, "for- 
ever hereafter" possession and jurisdiction over a country 
as large as Europe. Liberty here for utter despotism, 
the widest of excesses. We marvel that from the first 
Prince Rupert of the Rhine to the latest Lord Strathcona 

44 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

and Mount Royal, the Governors of the Ancient Company 
have, with Duncan-like demeanour, borne themselves so 
meek in their great office. 

It has been fashionable to paint the H. B. Co. as an 
agrarian oligarchy. Organized for the purpose of 
"making fur" before the time of the Habeas Corpus, two 
decades ahead of the Bank of England, sixty-two years 
before Benjamin Franklin began publishing "Poor Rich- 
ard's Almanac," and a century in advance of Watt's steam- 
engine, it is true that The Company, throughout the years, 
devoted itself to peltries and not to platting town sites. 
This was its business. From the beginning it has con- 
sistently kept faith with the Indians ; the word of The Com- 
pany has, for reward or for punishment, ever been worth 
its full face value. It was not an H. B. Scot who ex- 
claimed feelingly, "Honesty is the best policy, I've tried 
baith." 

The feeling of devotion to The Company is as strong to- 
day as it ever was. When the present Commissioner took 
office he penetrated the North on a tour of inspection. At 
Athabasca Landing, since it was not known just when the 
Head would arrive, the local official charged all his clerks 
and minions to be ready at the sound of a whistle to salute 
and fall into line for inspection. The call to arms came 
on Sunday morning during divine service. Every attache 
of The Company with one exception obeyed the signal. 
Young Tom Helly, the paid organist, stuck to his post; 
and next day he was called on the carpet. "It was a 
special service ; I was in the middle of the anthem, sir, and 
didn't like to leave the House of God." "Couldn't you 
show some respect?" roared the local officer. Man was 

45 



THE NEW NORTH 

near in Athabasca Landing and God far away. Down in 
the big office at Winnipeg is a Doomsday Book where 
the life -record of every servant of The Company is kept, 




C. C. Chipman, Commissioner of the H. B. Co. 

for no man who has ever served The Company is lost 
sight of. When there is a good fur-winter, every employe 
of The Company is handed an envelope which contains a 
bonus-cheque, — ten per cent of his yearly salary. 

4 6 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

The Commissioner of the Hudson's Bay Company and 
the head of one of Canada's big department stores were 
dining together at a Toronto Club. "After six o'clock I 
don't want to see or hear of an employe — he doesn't exist 
for me until eight o'clock next morning," said the head of 
the department store. "Well, I'm more curious than you," 
smiled the Commissioner of the H. B. Co., "I want to be 
reasonably assured of what every man-Jack of my people 
is doing all the time. I want to know what he reads, and 
if he treats his wife well, and how his last baby is getting 
along — you see, he's a working-partner of mine." 

There came out of Northern British Columbia last year 
the Indian wife and half-breed daughters of an H. B. Co. 
Factor. They were bound for Montreal and it was their 
first trip "outside." The Commissioner at Winnipeg con- 
tradicts the old saw, and surely has "a soul above a beaver- 
skin" ; like Mulvaney, too, he "has bowels." Quickly went 
forward a letter to a tactful woman in the border-town 
through which the visiting ladies must pass — "Meet them, 
and see that they get the proper things to wear in society 
circles in Montreal. I don't want them to feel ill at ease 
when they get there." Stories like these give us glimpses 
of the kind of paternalism exercised by the Ancient Com- 
pany, the one trust that has never ground the faces of 
the poor, and in whose people to-day appears the "con- 
stant service of the Old World." 

The big books of The Company a year or two ago in 
unmistakable round-hand declared that one Running Rab- 
bit, lawful widow of Blueskin, was entitled to draw from 
the coffers clear-side bacon and a modicum of flour. But 
one quarterly paysheet, returned to Winnipeg from Fort 

47 



THE NEW NORTH 

Churchill, showed that Running Rabbit in addition to her 
food allowance had been handed out forty cents' worth 
of cotton. Stern enquiry, backed by red-tape and The 
Company's seal as big as a saucer, was sent up to the 
Churchill Factor. Why had the allowance of Mrs. Blue- 
skin (nee Running Rabbit) been exceeded? By "return 
mail" nine months later the Factor reported, 

"The widow's gone, 
Her tent's forsaken, 
No more she comes 
For flour and bacon. 
N. B. The cotton was used for her shroud." 

The Ancient Company was penny-wise, but in spite of the 
copybook line, not pound-foolish, as its dividend paysheets 
conclusively prove. 

There is no desire to show forth these silent ones of the 
North as infallible men and immaculate. They make 
many mistakes; they were and are delightfully human, 
and we couldn't picture one of them with a saintly aureole. 
But in the past, as in the present, they were large men; 
they honoured their word, and you couldn't buy them. 
Men of action, whether inside fort walls, bartering in the 
tepee of the Indian, or off on silent trails alone, — it has 
been given to each of them to live life at firsthand. In 
every undertaking the determining factor of success is 
men, and not money or monopoly. And because the North 
still breeds men of the H. B. type, the eye of The Great 
Company is not dimmed, its force not abated. 

We spoke with no fewer than three men at The Landing 
who came into the North in the year of the Klondike rush, 

4 8 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

that is, just ten years ago. Into the human warp and 
woof of the Great Lone Land of Northern Canada the 
Klondike gold-rush intruded a new strand. The news 
of the strike on Yukon fields flashed round the world on 
wires invisible and visible, passed by word of mouth from 
chum to chum, and by moccasin telegraph was carried to 
remotest corners of the continent. Gold-fever is a disease 
without diagnosis or doctor — infectious, contagious, and 
hereditary; if its germ once stirs in a man's blood, till 
the day of his death he is not immune from an attack. 
The discovery of gold-dust in Dawson sent swarming 
through the waterways of sub-Arctic Canada a hetero- 
geneous horde, — gamblers of a hundred hells, old-time 
miners from quiet firesides, beardless boys from their 
books, human parasites of two continents, and dreamers 
from the Seven Seas. 

Coastwise they sought the North by steamers from 
'Frisco, Seattle, and Vancouver Island, and of the numbers 
of these the shipping offices have some records. But of 
that vast army who from the east and from the south 
travelled inland waterways towards the golden goal no 
tabulation has ever been made. Singly they went, in 
groups, and by partnerships of two and three. There was 
no route marked out by which they were to reach the 
glittering streams of which they dreamed; the general 
direction of north and west was all that guided them. 
Athabasca Landing was the portal through which they 
passed, and by every northward stream they travelled, — 
down the Athabasca toward the Mackenzie and up the 
Athabasca to the Peace, leaving stranded men and stranded 
boats on every shore. By raft and dug-out, scow and 

49 



THE NEW NORTH 

canoe, men essayed to travel rapid waterways who had 
never handled craft before, and the Indians still point out 
to you near Grand Rapids on the Athabasca the site of 
the Mounted Police Station where Sergeant Anderson res- 
cued a dozen tenderfoots from drowning. 

To the Indians of this vast country the unwonted inun- 
dation of the whites was a revelation. Before this, their 
knowledge of Europeans had been limited to men of the 
Hudson's Bay posts and the few black-robed Fathers of 
the missions. The priests had told the Indians that in the 
outside world French was the accepted language of the 
white man and that only the degraded and debased spoke 
English. Most of the Northern Indians who speak Eng- 
lish will tell you that they got their first lessons from the 
Klondike miners. 

And what of the men who followed the gleam? Some 
reached Dawson. These were few. Those who gained 
fortunes, were fewer still. In the old books of the H. B. 
Co. a favourite phrase of the Factor is "a band of Indians 
cast up from the east," "the Express from the North cast 
up at a late hour last night." On the way to Dawson, and 
filtering backward from that point, hundreds of gold- 
miners are "cast up" on every interior shore. Acting as 
attaches to Hudson's Bay posts, engaging as free traders, 
manipulating missionary boats for Protestant and Roman 
Catholic seekers for souls, trapping off their own bat, and, 
in one instance at least, marrying the missionary, they 
were constantly passing us. Round the home hearths 
wives wonder about them, and the old bent mother still 
prays for her absent son. A silence like this once entered 
upon is hard to break, and the wanderer in the silence 

So 



ATHABASCA LANDING 

wraps tighter about him the garment of the recluse. Out- 
cropping from the strata in striking individuality, they be- 
long to a different race to the plodding people of the Hud- 
son's Bay posts, and are interesting men wherever you 
meet them. Keen of vision, slow of speech, and with that 
dreamy look which only those acquire who have seen 
Nature at her secrets in the quiet places, — they are like 
boulders, brought down by the glacial drift and dropped 
here and there over the white map of the North. 



CHAPTER IV 

DOWN THE ATHABASCA ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE 
MILES TO GRAND RAPIDS 

"Set me in the urge and tide-drift 
Of the streaming hosts a-wing! 
Breast of scarlet, throat of yellow, 
Raucous challenge, wooings mellow — 
Every migrant is my fellow, 
Making northward with the Spring." 

— Bliss Carman. 

If you have to do with Indian or half-breed boatmen 
in the North you plan to begin your journey in the evening, 
even though you hope to run only a few miles before 
nightfall. This ensures a good start next morning, 
whereas it would be humanly impossible to tear men away 
from the flesh-pots (beer pots) of Athabasca Landing 
early in any day. It took these chaps all the afternoon 
to say good-bye, for each one in the village had to be 
shaken hands with, every dog apostrophized by name. 

The Athabasca Transport of which we form joyous part 
makes a formidable flotilla : seven specially-built scows or 
"sturgeon-heads." Each runs forty to fifty feet with a 
twelve-foot beam and carries ten tons. The oars are 
twenty feet long. It takes a strong man to handle the 
forty-foot steering-sweep which is mounted with an iron 
pivot on the stern. 

Our particular shallop is no different from the others, 
except that there is a slightly raised platform in the stern- 

52 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

sheets, evidently a dedication to the new Northern Man- 
ager of the H. B. Co. We share the pleasant company of 
a fourth passenger, Mrs. Harding, on her way home to 
Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. The second stur- 
geon-head carries seven members of the Royal Northwest 
Mounted Police, jolly laughing chaps, for are not they, 
too, like us, off duty? Inspector Pelletier and three men 





w <■<* j .**. 




A " Sturgeon-head " at Athabasca 

are to go with our Fur Transport as far as Resolution and 
then diverge to the east, essaying a cross-continent cut 
from there to salt water on Hudson Bay. For this pur- 
pose they ship two splendidly made Peterborough canoes. 
The other three members of the force are young chaps 
assigned to Smith's Landing on the Slave River, sent there 
to protect the wood bison of that region, the world's last 
wild buffalo. The third craft we observe with due re- 

53 



THE NEW NORTH 

spect as "the cook boat." The remaining four scows 
carry cargo only, — the trade term being "pieces," each 
piece from eighty to a hundred pounds, a convenient 
weight for carrying on the portages. 

June 6th at a quarter of seven saw the whole populace of 
Athabasca Landing on the river bank — dogs, babies, the 
officials of the Hudson's Bay, parson, priest, police, and 
even the barkeep, — and with the yelping of dogs and 




Farewell, Nistow ! " 



"Farewell, Nistow !" we are off. We are embarked on 
a 2500-mile journey, the longest water route on the con- 
tinent, down which floats each year the food, clothing, and 
frugal supplies of a country as big as Europe. 

The river is running five miles an hour and there is no 
need of the oars. The steersman is our admiration, as 
with that clumsy stern-sweep he dodges rocks, runs riffles, 
and makes bends. The scow is made of green wood, and 
its resilience stands it in good stead as, like a snake, it 

54 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

writhes through tight channels or over ugly bits of wa- 
ter. Everybody is in good humour; we are dreamers 
dreaming greatly. Why should we not be happy? Mrs. 
Harding is homeward-bound, Mr. Brabant on a new rung 
of the fur ladder of preferment, Inspector Pelletier and 
his associates starting on a quest of their own seeking. 
Sitting low among the "pieces" of the police boat, with 
only his head visible in the sunset glow, Dr. Sussex builds 
air-castles of that eleemosynary hospital of his on the 
Arctic Circle. The cook is whistling from the cook-boat. 
Five years ago he graduated from a business college, but 
the preparation of bannock and sow-belly appeals to the 
blood more insistently than trial balances and the petty 
cash book. As for ourselves, the Kid's smile is almost 
audible as she runs a loving hand over the oilskin cover 
of the camera. A favourite expression of mine in the lati- 
tudes below when the world smiled was, "Oh, I'm glad I'm 
alive and white!" On this exclamation I start now, but 
stop at the word "white." North of Athabasca Landing 
white gives place to a tint more tawny. 

A hundred yards out, the Policemen are boyish enough 
to launch those shiny Peterboroughs just to try them, and 
in and out among the big sturgeon-heads, debonair 
dolphins, they dart. Then comes the rain, and one by 
one the clumsy boats turn toward shore. There are some 
things that even the enquiring mind cannot run to ground, 
things that just happen out of the blue. For fifteen suc- 
cessive springs I have tried to discover the first boy who 
brought marbles to school when marble-season came in, 
and I have never yet been able to put my finger on that 
elusive history-maker. So on this voyage, the fleet is 

55 



THE NEW NORTH 

started and stopped, landings are made, camping-places 
decided upon, and no ear can detect the sound of com- 
mand. 

The scows tie up, and without undressing we sleep on 
board, pulling a tarpaulin over us and letting the rain 
rain. At 5:30 next morning we hear the familiar "Nis- 
tow! Nistow!" of the awakened camp. This word lit- 
erally means "brother-in-law," but it is the vocative used 
by the Cree in speaking to anybody he feels kindly toward. 
The cook makes a double entry with bacon and bannock, 
and there is exulting joy in our soul. Who would nap- 
kins bear, or finger-bowls ? We had put them far behind, 
with the fardels. 

It is the season of lengthening days and fading nights. 
At seven o'clock we are in the river again, and for three 
glorious hours we float, first one scow in front, then the 
other, social amenities in Cree being shouted from boat 
to boat. Then, in one voice from three boats, "Mooswa !" 
and far beyond white man's vision the boatmen sight a 
moose. There is a little red tape about the ethics of taking 
off those precious Peterboroughs which were to make his- 
tory on the map, and in the delay the moose wandered into 
pleasant pastures. The boatmen were very much dis- 
gruntled, as the moose is treasure-trove, the chief fresh 
meat that his world offers the Indian. From here to the 
Arctic are no domestic animals, the taste of beef or mutton 
or pork or chicken is unknown, bread gives place to ban- 
nock (with its consequent indigestion "bannockburn"), 
and coffee is a beverage discredited. Tobacco to smoke, 
strong, black, sweetened tea to drink from a copper ket- 
tle, — this is luxury's lap. 

56 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

The bowsman points to a rude cross on the right bank 
where a small runway makes in, "Gon-sta-wa-bit" (man 
who was drowned), he volunteers. Yesterday a Mounted 
Policeman buried there the body of an Indian man, his 
wife and his baby, who fell through the ice in a dog-sled 
this spring, — three in one grave, Lamartine's trinity, the 
Father, the Mother, and the Child. 

It is Sunday, and we have music from a li'l fiddle made 
by a squaw at Lac Ste. Anne. Lac la Biche River we 
pass, and Calling River, and at five in the evening are at 
Swift Current, Peachy Pruden's place, and then Red Mud. 
Sunday night is clear and beautiful, and we float all night. 
Making a pillow of a squat packing-case consigned to the 
missionary at Hay River, and idly wondering what it 
might contain, I draw up a canvas sheet. But it is too 
wonderful a night to sleep. Lying flat upon our backs 
and looking upward, we gaze at the low heaven full of 
stars, big, lustrous, hanging down so low that we can 
almost reach up and pluck them. Two feet away, holding 
in both hands the stern sweep, is the form of the Cree 
steersman, his thoughtful face a cameo against the shadow 
of the cut-banks. At his feet another half-breed is 
wrapped in his blanket, and from here to the bow the boat 
is strewn with these human cocoons. The reclining friend 
breaks the silence with a word or two of Cree in an under- 
tone to the steersman, a screech-owl cries, from high over- 
head drops down that sound which never fails to stir 
vagrant blood — the "unseen flight of strong hosts prophe- 
sying as they go." It is the wild geese feeling the old 
spring fret even as we feel it. In imagination I pierce 
the distance and see the red panting throat of that long- 
6 57 



THE NEW NORTH 

necked voyageur as he turns to shout back raucous encour- 
agement to his long, sky-clinging V. 

Floating as we float, it is no longer a marvel to us that 
this North holds so many scientific men and finished schol- 
ars — colonial Esaus serving as cooks, dog-drivers, pack- 
ers, trackers, oil-borers. The not knowing what is round 
the next corner, the old heart-hunger for new places and 
untrod ways, — who would exchange all this for the easy 
ways of fatted civilization! 

At five in the morning there is a drawing-in of the fleet 
to Pelican Portage. Before two hours have passed the 
grasshopper has become a burden, and it is 102 in the 
shade, and no shade to be had. We are now a hundred 
miles from Athabasca Landing. On the left bank we 
come across a magnificent gas-well with a gush of flame 
twenty or thirty feet in height. 

It seems that eleven years ago, seeking for petroleum, 
the Dominion Government had a shaft sunk here; their 
boring apparatus was heavy, the plunger with its attach- 
ment weighing nearly a ton. At eight hundred feet the 
operator broke into an ocean of gas, and the pressure 
blew him with plunger and appliances into the air as a ball 
comes from a cannon-bore. The flow of gas was so heavy 
that it clogged his drills with maltha and sand, and from 
then to now the gas has been escaping. To-day the sound 
of the escape ricochets up and down the palisaded channel 
so that we cannot hear each other speak. There is gas 
enough here, if we could pipe it and bring it under control, 
to supply with free illumination every city of prairie Can- 
ada. It has destroyed all vegetation for a radius of twenty 
yards ; but, oddly enough, outside this range of demarcation 

58 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

the growth is more luxuriant and comes earlier and stays 
later than that of the surrounding country. One red- 
headed Klondiker, ignorant of gas and its ways, ten years 
ago struck a match to this escaping stream, was blown into 
the bushes beyond, and came out minus hair, eye-brows 
and red beard — the quickest and closest shave he ever had. 
The shells of birds' eggs, tea-leaves from many a cheering 
copper-kettle, tufts of rabbit-hair, and cracked shin-bones 
of the moose, with here a greasy nine of diamonds, show 
this Stromboli of the Athabasca to be the gathering-place 
of up and down-river wanderers. You can boil a kettle 
or broil a moose-steak on this gas-jet in six minutes, and 
there is no thought of accusing metre to mar your joy. 
The Doctor has found a patient in a cabin on the high 
bank, and rejoices. The Indian has consumption. The 
only things the Doctor could get at were rhubarb pills and 
cod-liver oil, but these, with faith, go a long way. They 
may have eased the mind of poor Lo, around whose dying 
bunk we hear the relatives scrapping over his residuary 
estate of rusty rifle, much-mended fishing-net, and three 
gaunt dogs. 

We pass House River, and the devout cross themselves 
and murmur a prayer. The point is marked by a group 
of graves covered with canvas. Here years ago a family 
of four, travelling alone, contracted diphtheria, and died 
before help could reach them. There is another legend of 
s which the boatmen unwillingly speak, the story of the 
Wetigo, or Indian turned cannibal, who murdered a priest 
on this lonely point, and ate the body of his victim. The 
taste for human flesh, Philip Atkinson assures us, grows 
with the using, and this lunatic of long ago went back to 

59 



THE NEW NORTH 

the camps, secured an Indian girl as bride, carried her to 
this point, took her life, and ate of her flesh. It is a grue- 
some story. 

Now begin the rapids, ninety miles of which we are to 




Grand Rapids on the Athabasca River 



run. This rough water on the Athabasca is one of the 
only two impediments to navigation on the long course 
between Athabasca Landing and the Polar Ocean. These 
first rapids, frankly, are a disappointment. The water 
is high, higher than it has been for ten years, so the 

60 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

boiling over the boulders is not very noticeable. The 
Pelican Rapid and the Stony we shoot without turning 
a hair; the Joli Fou is a bit more insistent, but, as the 
cook says, "nothing to write home about." 

We drift in a drowsy dream of delight, and in the 
evening arrive at the head of Grand Rapids. If we had 
looked slightingly on the rough water passed, what we 
now see would satisfy the greediest. We tie up and get 
a good view of what lies ahead, and get also our first real 
introduction to the mosquito. In mid-stream he had not 
bothered us much, but after supper it rained a little, the 
day had been warm, and with cymbals, banners, and brass- 
bands, he comes in cohorts to greet us. The scows have 
their noses poked into the bank, the men have built smudge 
fires in front, but we decide that the best way to escape 
the mosquito is to go to bed. We lie down in the stern- 
sheets with our clothes on, make night-caps of our Stetson 
hats, pull the veils down over our necks, and try to sleep, 
but it is no avail. Each one of these mosquitoes is a 
Presbyterian mosquito and it has been ordained that this 
night he is to taste of white blood. It rains incessantly, 
and that hot hole in which we lie is one brown cloud of 
mosquitoes. The men on the bank have finally given it 
up as a bad job, and they set round the fires smoking 
and slapping different parts of their persons, swearing 
volubly in English. For the Cree language is devoid of 
invective. In the morning we are a sorry crowd, con- 
versation is monosyllabic and very much to the point. 
It is the first serious trial to individual good-humour. 
When each one of your four million pores is an irritation- 
channel of mosquito-virus it would be a relief to growl 

61 



THE NEW NORTH 

at somebody about something. But the sun and smiles 
come out at the same time, and, having bled together, we 
cement bonds of friendship. What did Henry the Fifth 
say on the eve of Agincourt, — "For he to-day who sheds 
his blood with me shall be my brother"? 

Who would worry about mosquitoes with that splendid 
spectacular of the Grand Rapids at our feet? The great 
flood (Kitchee Abowstik) is divided into two channels 
by an island probably half a mile in length, with its long 
axis parallel to the flow of the river, and this island solves 
the question of progress. The main channel to the left is 
impassable; it is certain death that way. Between the 
island and the right shore is a passage which on its island 
side, with nice manipulation, is practicable for empty boats. 
Then the problem before us is to run the rough water at 
the near end of the island, tie up there, unload, transfer 
the pieces by hand -car over the island to its other end, 
let the empty scows down carefully through the channel 
by ropes, and reload at the other end. 

Between the bank where we are and the island ahead is 
a stretch of roaring water dangerous enough looking. 
We have learned ere this, however, to sit tight and watch 
for events. The careless Indians have straightened into 
keen-eyed, responsible voyageurs, each muscle taut, every 
sense alert. Our boat goes first, one half-breed with huge 
pole braces himself as bowsman, the most able man takes 
the stern sweep, the others stand at the oars. Fifteen 
minutes of good head-work brings us to the island and we 
step out with relief. The other boats follow and anchor, 
and we have opportunity at close range to inspect these 
worst rapids of the Athabascan chain. The current on 

62 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

the west side of the dividing island looks innocent, and 
we understand how the greenhorn would choose this pas- 
sage-way, to his destruction. 




Portage at Grand Rapids Island 

The transportation of pieces occupied four days, every 
moment of which we enjoyed. Grand Rapids Island is 
prodigal in wild flowers, — vetches, woodbine, purple and 
pink columbines, wild roses, several varieties of false Sol- 
omon's seal, our persisting friend dwarf cornel, and, treas- 

6 3 



THE NEW NORTH 

ure-trove, our first anemone, — that beautiful buttercup 
springing from its silvered sheath — 

"And where a tear has dropt a wind-flower blows." 

I measured a grass-stem and found it two feet three inches 
high, rising amid last year's prostrate growth. 




Our transport at Grand Rapids Island 

At Grand Rapids Island we overtook two scows which 
had preceded us from The Landing and whose crews had 
waited here to assist in the transport. It gave us oppor- 
tunity to observe these sixty representative half-breeds 
from Lac la Biche. Tall, strong, happy-go-lucky, with no 
sordid strain in their make-up, they are fellows that one 
cannot help feeling sympathy for. A natural link be- 
tween the East and the West, the South of Canada and 

6 4 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

the North, they have bridged over the animosity and 
awkwardness with which the Red race elsewhere has 
approached the White. 

In a glade our camp is made, inside our tents we arrange 
the mosquito-bar (a tent within a tent looking something 
like a good-sized dog-kennel), and here we lie in our 
blankets. The hum of the foiled mosquito is unction to 




Cheese-shaped Nodules, Grand Rapids Island 

our souls. It is a relief, too, to remove the day's cloth- 
ing, the first time in ninety-six hours. 

The Athabasca here cuts through a cretaceous sand- 
stone, — soft, yellowish, homogeneous. In passing Grand 
Rapids Island it has a fall of ninety feet. The river has 
weathered the banks into vertical cliffs four or five hun- 
dred feet high, imbedded in which are wonderful cheese- 
shaped nodules, some the size of baseballs, some as big 
as mill-stones. The river-bed is strewn thick with these 
concretions from which the swift current has worn the 

65 



THE NEW NORTH 

softer matrix away, and many of the stones are as spher- 
ical as if turned out by a hand-lathe. The sandstone 
banks opposite the island are overlain with a stratum of 
lignite three or four feet thick, which burns freely and 
makes acceptable fuel. Sections of fossil trees are also 
seen, and the whole thing is fascinating, one's great wish 
being for a larger knowledge of geology so as to read 
aright this strange page of history in stone. 

Timber along the Athabasca has suffered much from 
forest fires. What we see is largely second growth, — 
Banksian pine, fir, spruce, birch, and aspen. The aspen 
is the first deciduous tree to leaf. Tall, slender, delicate, 
its bole is clean as an organ-pipe and its terraced feathery 
branches seem to float in air. 

Across the roaring water swallows are nesting in the 
clayey cliffs: — 

"This guest of summer, 
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
By his loved mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, 
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
Hath made his pendant bed and procreant cradle : 
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 
The air is delicate." 

We learn that half-breeds share the Scottish supersti- 
tion that it is unlucky to disturb bank-swallows. 

Others of the migrant host travel in upper air more 
quickly than we on water, and have left us far behind, — 
swans, the Canada goose, great flocks of brant, waveys 
by the millions, followed by their cousins of the duck 
tribe, — spoon-bill, canvas-back, mallard, pin-tail, ring- 

66 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

neck, wood duck, and merganser. The geese will not stop 
until they have passed the Arctic Circle. Why people use 
the word "goose" as synonym for stupidity is beyond the 
ken of the ordinary observer. The text-books tell us 
tritely that the goose lives to be a hundred years. If she 
does, she may exclaim with the Churchmen, "Yet are my 
years but labour and sorrow." The little chaps who have 
their birthday parties among sub-Arctic reeds are sur- 
rounded with enemies from the first day they crack their 
baby shells. Lynx and raccoon prey upon them by land, 
eagles and owls swoop upon them as they swim; and as 
with one eye they scan the sky above them, a greedy pike 
is apt to snap their web-feet from under them and draw 
them to a watery grave. 

The cadets of the Hudson's Bay Company exchange 
courtesies with the Mounted Police, each considering him- 
self a distinct cut above the other. One Mounted Police- 
man, whose duty it had been to escort the crazed Russian 
Doukhobortsi on one of their "altogether" pilgrimages, 
is hailed across the circle, "Here, lend us your knife, you 
nursemaid to the Douks." "Who spoke?" yawned the 
Policeman. "Was it that fur-pup of the Hudson's Bay?" 
'Yes," retorted the first, "and I'm glad I'm it; you couldn't 
pay me to wear a red coat and say 'Sir' to a damned little 
Frenchman, even if you are going to blaze a trail to Hud- 
son Bay." 

Some one asks Sergeant Joyce to tell his Bible story. 
He says, "Oh, about Coal-Oil Johnnie! It was the cub's 
first year in the service, and he got off with some civilians 
and was drunk for a week. When he was in the Guard 
Room awaiting court-martial he had lots of time 'to sit 

6 7 



i s 



THE NEW NORTH 

in clink, admirin' 'ow the world was made.' Likewise he 
was very dry. There was nothing for him to amuse him- 
self with but a paper of pins. He took the pillow of his 
cot and used the whole bunch of pins in working on it 
the one word 'Hagar,' in letters six inches high. The 
inspecting officer came in and the pin sign caught his eye. 
He spelled it out letter by letter, 'H-a-g-a-r, — what was 
the matter with him?' Johnnie retorted, 'The him was a 
her, and she died of thirst in the wilderness.' The in- 
specting officer says to Johnnie, 'Well, that would never 
happen to you.' " 

A peculiar drumming wafts from the shore-line. "Pa- 
pas-ku," says one of the Cree lads, pulling his pipe from 
his mouth and listening. Young Hudson's Bay to my 
enquiring look returns, "The Canadian ruffed grouse," 
which Sussex elucidated, "Bonasa umbellus togata," at 
which we all feel very much relieved. 

The Kid was pressing specimens, and, holding up a 
branch, the Mounted Policeman next her said, "Young 
jackpine, I think." "It belongs to the Conifer family," 
corrects the Doctor. "Oh!" says the Mounted Police- 
man, with a sniff, "then we'll give it back to 'em the next 
time one of the Conifer boys comes round." The man of 
the river and the woods hates a Latin name, and any stray 
classic knowledge you have is best hidden under a napkin. 
The descriptive terms men use here are crisp and to the 
point. The vicious habit of giving birds bad names is 
one that grows, and you never know when the scientific 
have come to a finality. For instance, little Robin Red- 
Breast ("the pious bird with scarlet breast" whose nest 
with four eggs the Kid discovered to-day), has succes- 

68 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

sively lived through three tags, "Turdus migratorius," 
"Planesticus migratorius," and "Turdus canadensis." If 
he had not been an especially plucky little beggar he would 
have died under the libels long ago. For my own part 
I cannot conceive how a man with good red blood in his 
veins could look a chirky little robin in the eye and call 
him to his face a "Planesticus migratorius" when as 
chubby youngster he had known the bird and loved him 
as Robin Red-Breast. One is inclined to ask with sus- 
picion, "Is naming a lost art?" Any new flower discov- 
ered these days, every clever invention in the realm of 
machinery, is forthwith saddled with an impossible name. 
If it had not been easy to clip the term "automobile" down 
to the working stub "auto," the machine would never have 
run our streets. Again, the decimal system is conceded 
to be far ahead of the asinine "five and one-half yards make 
one rod, pole or perch" ; the only reason why the common- 
sense thing does not supersede the foolish one is that the 
sensible measurement has the fool tag on it. Who could 
imagine ever going into a store and asking for seven deci- 
metres and nine centimetres of picture-moulding, or drop- 
ping into the corner grocery to buy a hectolitre of green 
onions ? When man dug gold and iron and tin out of the 
earth he made things with them. Now when we discover 
a new mineral we dub it "molybdenum" and let it rust in 
innocuous ease. When man loses the art of nervous 
speech, his power of action goes with it. And as we 
ruminate, the Bonasa umbellus togata drums on. 

When we pass the parallel of 55 N. we come 
into a very wealth of new words, a vocabulary that has 
found its way into no dictionary but which is accepted of 

69 



THE NEW NORTH 

all men. The steep bank opposite us is a "cut bank," an 
island or sandbar in a river is a "batture." A narrow 
channel is called a "she-ny," evidently a corruption of the 
French chenal. When it leads nowhere and you have 
to back down to get out, you have encountered a "blind 
she-ny." The land we have come from is known as "Out- 
side" or "Lc Grand Pays." Anywhere other than where 
we sit is "that side," evidently originating from the view- 
point of a man to whom all the world lay either on this 
side or that side of the river that stretched before him. 
When you obtain credit from a Hudson's Bay store, you 
"get debt." A Factor's unwillingness to advance you 
goods on credit would be expressed thus, "The Company 
will give me no debt this winter." From here northward 
the terms "dollars" and "cents" are unheard. An article 
is valued at "three skins" or "eight skins" or "five skins," 
harking back to the time when a beaver-skin was the unit 
of money. The rate of exchange to-day is from four 
skins to two skins for a dollar. Trapping animals is "mak- 
ing fur." "I made no fur last winter and The Company 
would give me no debt," is a painful picture of hard times. 
Whenever an Indian has a scanty larder, he is "starving," 
and you may be "starving" many moons without dying or 
thinking of dying. "Babiche" in the North is the tie that 
binds, and "sinew" is the thread, babiche being merely 
cured rawhide from moose or caribou, the sinew the longi- 
tudinal strands taken from either side of the spinal column 
of the same animals. 

There is but one thing on this planet longer than the 
equator, and that is the arm of British justice, and the 
Mounted Police, these chaps sprawling at our feet, are the 

70 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

men who enforce it. The history of other lands shows a 
determined fight for the frontier, inch by inch advance- 
ment where an older civilization pushes back the native, — 




Scouts of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police 

there are wars and feuds and bloody raids. Not so here. 
When the homesteader comes down the river we are 
threading and, in a flood, colonization follows him, he will 
find British law established and his home ready. The 
most compelling factor making for dignity and decency 

71 



THE NEW NORTH 

in this border-country is the little band of red-coated 
riders, scarcely a thousand in number. Spurring singly 
across the plains that we have traversed since leaving 
Winnipeg, they turn up on lone riverway or lakeside in 
the North just when most wanted. 

Varied indeed is this man's duty, — "nursemaid to the 
Doukhobor" was a thrust literally true. His, too, was the 
task on the plains of seeing that the Mormon doesn't marry 
overmuch. He brands stray cattle, interrogates each new 
arrival in a prairie-waggon, dips every doubtful head of 
stock, prevents forest-fires, keeps weather records, escorts 
a lunatic to an asylum eight hundred miles away, herds 
wood bison on the Slave, makes a cross-continent dash 
from Great Slave Lake to Hudson Bay, preserves the bal- 
ance of power between American whaler and Eskimo on 
the Arctic edge! 

At one time the roll-call of one troup of Mounted Police 
included in its rank and file three men who had held com- 
missions in the British service, an ex-midshipman, a son 
of a Colonial Governor, a grandson of a Major-General, 
a medical student from Dublin, two troopers of the Life 
Guards, an Oxford M. A., and half a dozen ubiquitous 
Scots. Recently an ex-despatch-bearer from De Wet joined 
the force at Regina, and although the cold shoulder was 
turned on him for a day or two, he soon made good. One 
of the young fellows stretched before us, now going to 
Fort Smith to round up wood bison, was born in Tasmania, 
ran away from school at fourteen, sheared sheep and 
hunted the wallaby, stoked a steamer from Australia to 
England and from England to Africa, and in the early 
days of bicycles was a professional racer. 

72 



DOWN THE ATHABASCA 

Constable Walker, lying lazily on his back blowing blue 
spirals into the air, has in the long winter night made more 
than once, with dogs, that perilous journey from the 
Yukon to the Mackenzie mouth (one thousand miles over 
an unknown trail), carrying to the shut-in whalers their 
winter mail. On one of these overland journeys he cut off 
the tips of his four toes. His guide fainted, but Walker 
took babiche and, without a needle, sewed up the wound. 
On this trip he was fifty-seven days on the trail, during 
five days of which the thermometer hovered between six- 
ty-two and sixty-eight degrees below. 



CHAPTER V 

NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

"On wan dark night on Lac St. Pierre, 
De win' she blow, blow, blow, 
An' de crew of de wood scow 'Julie Plante" 

Got scar't an' run below — 
For de win' she blow lak hurricane 

Bimeby she blow some more, 
An' de scow bus' up on Lac St. Pierre 
Wan arpent from de shore." 

— Dr. Drummond. 

This morning we are to leave the Island; it is June 12th 
and Friday. The daylight lengthens from day to day 
and last night at half past ten underneath the mosquito- 
bar within the tent, it was light enough to thread a needle. 
We have mending to do each night, and dragging clothes 
behind the boat makes a satisfactory kind of progressive 
laundry. At dusk we had seen an empty scow floating 
down river, adrift from Athabasca Landing. In the mid- 
dle of Grand Rapids she broke amidships, but held to- 
gether until in the darkness she floated beyond our ken. 

Trouble of our own awaits us. With no one noting, an 
adventurous scow, with all her precious cargo, has pulled 
loose from her moorings. By the time the Cree watchman 
discovers that the "Go-Quick-Hcr" has taken the bit in 
her teeth, the runaway with tail-sweep set has turned the 
next corner of the Athabasca. Great excitement! Billy 
Loutit and Emile Fosseneuve borrow the Police canoe and 

74 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

go in chase. It is such a rough bit of water that we hold 
our breaths, for a false stroke means death to both; but 
that false stroke does not come. Billy Loutit knows this 
river as we know the borders and shrubs in our garden- 
bed. 

This accident causes everyone to look grave. The Ed- 
monton value of the cargo is over two thousand dollars, 




■■■■■Bar -'-mX'TV ■ . aiu^HHi 
Towing the Wrecked Barge Ashore 



but it is a loss that cannot be measured in dollars and cents. 
These wrecked goods, gaily sailing down the Athabasca, 
cannot be duplicated at some convenient grocery around 
the corner. 

We have learned that any untoward happening means 
a half day's delay. Philip Atkinson calls me to one side 
to suggest that it would be a "clear waste" to leave behind 
the eggs of "that duck's nest I showed you the day we 
came." Atkinson is a half-breed with a Hercules-build 

75 



THE NEW NORTH 

who looks forty-five and owns up to sixty. He and I 
chatted over the mallard eggs and my collection of wild 
flowers, he respecting the preservative art and I in full 
awe of that art gastronomic of his which gulps the Mal- 
lards-in-embryo, sans fourchette, sans salt, sans ceremony. 

They are an interesting study, these half-breeds; it 
means much to each on which side of the English Channel 
his father had birth. When a Frenchman marries an 
Indian woman he reverts to her scale of civilization ; when 
a Scot takes a native to wife he draws her up to his. Our 
crew live at Lac la Biche and were engaged last winter for 
their season's work at from twenty to forty dollars a month, 
with board and moccasins. They walked a hundred miles 
to Athabasca Landing to connect with their summer's job, 
and the absolute certainty of regular meals just now ap- 
peals. They get three meals a day going with the cur- 
rent, and four w r hile tracking back, with meals thrown in 
when anything unusual happens or a moose is killed. One 
cannot help wondering how that elastic term "the law of 
heredity" works out with these people, cut off from the 
lives their fathers led and from the free woods-life of the 
pre-civilization Indian. 

Philip, duck-stuffed but untroubled by "that full feeling 
after eating," lights his pipe and looks back through the 
years. "My father belonged to The Company, my mother 
was an Ojibway from the Lake of the Woods country. 
My father went back to the Old Country when I was seven, 
leaving me to an uncle to be educated, and I don't know 
'B' from a bull's foot. He put me to work on the wood- 
pile from morning till night. When my father came back 
after twelve years and found me ignorant, he cried like 

76 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

a baby. I have no education, but," with a contemplative 
puff, "I have friends wherever I go." Philip is good to 
look at and he is a linguist, speaking Cree, French, and 
excellent English with a delightful Scotch accent. He is 
an ardent admirer of the H. B. Company. "They always 
kept their word with a man, and when they had done with 
him, returned him without cost to his old home." Philip 
and his two sons were the first to shoot the Grand Rapids, 
and he tells us that this stretch of the Athabasca River has 
been used only twenty years. Before that time people 
from the North reached Winnipeg by the Clearwater. 
Philip is a Loyalist. During the half-breed rebellion of 
1885 he carried dispatches to Middleton and Otter, going 
seventy-five miles one day on foot. He had his horse, "a 
draught-horse as black as a crow," taken from him twice, 
got through the lines and stole another, and tells proudly 
how for his deed of valor he was presented with an As- 
somption belt. 

At last we are off, keeping sharp look-out for the lost 
scow. Buffalo River, where we pull up for the night, 
is a recognized camping-place. The men know where to 
put their hands on old-time tent-poles, the boys dig out 
shin-bones of the moose, — the relics of some former feast, 
— which they gnaw as a puppy mumbles an old bone. 

Another manifestation of gas is here. It bubbles up 
on the shore and through the water at the boat's bow, 
and as we strike a match the whole surface flames like 
the brandy on a Christmas plum-pudding. On the oppo- 
site side of the river are "lobsticks," a new word to us and 
a new thing. To stand as a living totem-pole, the Indians 
select on a striking promontory a tall spruce and from a 

77 



THE NEW NORTH 

section of the trunk lop all the branches except two, which 
are left as wings. If the lobstick is to stand a monument 
to a certain man or party, the names of those to be hon- 
ored are written in Cree on an attached slab. We were to 
notice lobsticks from point to point along the rest of our 
journey, some of them indicating good hunting-grounds 
or fishing-places back from the shore, but most of them 
memorials of happenings on the river. 

The Little Buffalo carries to the Athabasca its noisy 
current between two high escarpments, and on the shelf 
leading back from the banks of the main stream is a far- 
reaching plateau of splendidly-fertile land. In the scow 
next us the two young Crees who are preparing the food 
for our evening "meat-su" carry on a religious contro- 
versy as they slice the sow-belly. We gather that one has 
been taken into the Protestant fold and that the other 
follows the priests. Duncan Tremble comes down and 
cuffs them both soundly, putting an end to the argument 
with, "It's all the same as the other, just like the Hudson's 
Bay Company and the free trader. Each one tells you his 
goods is the best and the other is uec-moy-yuh mee-wah- 
sin (no good). It's that way with the God-goods of the 
white men. Each church tells you that his is the best, 
but they all come down to us in the same scow, both the 
priest and the missionary." 

Next morning we are all keyed-up for the rapids, and 
about six miles down we encounter the Brule, the first 
one, and take it square in mid-channel. We ship a little 
water, but pass through it all too soon, for the compelling 
grandeur of the Brule grips one. The river here is held 
between vertical walls of the reddest of red sandstone 

78 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

against which the lush greenery makes a striking con- 
trast. Twenty miles below is the Boiler Rapid. It got its 
name not from its churning water but because the boiler 
of the steamer Wrigley was lost here and still remains 
at the bottom of the basin. The walls of this rapid are 
as clear-cut as if wrought into smoothness by mallet and 
chisel. The tar-soaked sands appear off and on all the 
way to McMurray. Next comes the Long Rapid (Kaw- 
kinwalk Abowstick), which we run close to its right bank. 

From the distance sounds the ominous roar of the Big 
Cascade. At quarter past four we reach the head of the 
swirling fall. The underlying cause of the Big Cascade 
is a limestone ledge which cuts the channel diagonally 
and makes ugly-looking water. We. plan to run the rapid 
one boat at a time. The crews are doubled. Our steers- 
man is alert, expectant, and as agile as a cat, his black 
hair switching in the wind. Sitting in the centre of the 
scow, as we do, the sensation is very different to that which 
one experiences in running rapids in a canoe. Then it is 
all swiftness and dexterity, for your craft is light, and, 
in expert hands, easily dirigible with one clever turn of the 
wrist. With a ten-ton scow the conditions change and 
you feel correspondingly more helpless. 

The great rapid stretches from shore to shore and the 
drop is sheer. With much excitement, the bowsman 
points out the channel that seems to him the safe one. 
No one speaks, and the big awkward craft is brought 
up for the jump. It is an elephant drawing his feet to- 
gether to take a water-fence. For all we own in the world 
we wouldn't be anywhere but just where we sit. If it is 
going to be our last minute, well, Kismet ! let it come. At 

79 



THE NEW NORTH 

least, it will not be a tame way of going out. For the 
life of me I cannot forbear a cry of exultation. Then there 
is the feeling below one's feet which you experienced when 
you were a kiddie lying flat on your stomach coasting 
down a side-hill and your little red sled struck a stone. 
We, too, have struck something, but do not stop to ask 
what the obstruction is. 

At the foot of the rapids, we hurry the boatmen ashore. 




The Scow Breaks Her Back and Fills 



I want to photograph the next scow as she shoots the fall. 
We reach a good vantage-point and, getting the coming 
craft in the finder, I have just time to notice that her pas- 
sengers are Inspector Pelletier and Dr. Sussex, when a 
sharp crack rings out like the shot of a pistol. Just as 
we touch the button, something happens. We wanted a 
snap-shot, and it was a snap-shot we got. The scow has 
broken her back and begins to fill. 

80 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

The blue-and- white jerkin of Isadore Tremble, the pilot, 
dances in the sun as he gesticulates and directs his two 
passengers to crawl to the top of the boat's freight. In 
less time than it takes to write it, the men from our scow 
have launched the police canoes and make their way 
through the boiling water to take off Pelletier and the 
Doctor. The Inspector says, "Step quick, Doctor, there's 
no time to waste." The native politeness of Sussex doesn't 
fail him, even in this crisis, "After you, Inspector." Then 
Pelletier says, sharply, "Jump, I tell you, jump; there's 
no time for — Gaston-and-Alphonse business here." 

As always, it is impossible to tell who directs affairs, 
but quickly things happen. Lines are run from the wreck 
to the shore, other scows discharge their cargo on the 
bank and push out to take the water-logged goods from 
the wreck. The lightened craft is pulled ashore. There 
has been no loss of life, but it is a sorry-looking cargo 
that piles up on the bank, — five thousand dollars' worth of 
goods destroyed in three minutes ! 

A sad procession, we make the boats, and drop down- 
stream toward McMurray. The night is beautiful. The 
sun sank in a crimson splendour an hour ago. A low-hung 
moon comes out and is visible and is hidden alternately 
as we pass on the shore-line high hill and intervening 
swale. With a blanket thrown over me, as the others 
sleep, I lie along the gunwale, and the beauty of it sinks 
into my very soul. Just before we enter McMurray the 
wraith of a tall oil-derrick tells of the enterprise of some 
pioneer in the wilderness. 

The location of Fort McMurray is ideal. At this point 
the river breaks into two branches which encircle a high- 

81 



THE NEW NORTH 

banked and thickly-wooded island. Some hundreds of 
yards farther on the Clearwater River makes in; so here 
we have three streams. The fort has a foundation dating 
back forty years. This fur outpost will be the terminus 
of the Alberta and Great Waterways Railway, and one 
could not well imagine a more beautiful site for a great 
city. On the broad flat as we enter appear a handful of 
Indian houses and the little stores of the fur-traders. 

Letters from the outside are not as eagerly looked for 
as one would expect. To the people who live within the 
North, the North is their world, and to them the news 
of who is to be appointed to the charge of the next post 
down the river is of more importance than the partition 
of Turkey or a possible redistribution of the thrones of 
Europe. Mr. Brabant says, "Oh, by the way, Bob, there 
is a package of letters for you somewhere in the scow. 
Shall I dig them out for you?" "Never mind," says Bob, 
"I'll get them to-morrow. Have you got any whiskey?" 

It is Sunday the fourteenth of June. On the long beach 
is strewn the water-soaked cargo of the wrecked scow, the 
abomination of desolation. Mrs. Harding, although all 
of her personal belongings and her "special orders" are 
ruined, smiles bravely. It is a point of honour in the 
North not to whine, whatever happens. All day we work 
trying to save some of the wrecked cargo. Bales of goods 
are unwound and stretched out for hundreds of yards in 
the sun. Bandanna handkerchiefs flutter on bushes. 
Toilet soap, boots, and bear-traps are at our feet. The 
Fire-Ranger of the district, Mr. Biggs, has his barley and 
rice spread out on sheeting, and, turning it over, says 
bravely, "I think it will dry." Mathematical and astro- 

82 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

nomical instruments consigned to a scientist on the Arctic 
edge are shaken off centre and already have begun to 
rust, and there are miles and miles of cordage and nets, 
with braids and sewing silks and Hudson's Bay blankets ! 
In the midst of his wrecked drugs and cherished per- 
sonal effects the Doctor is a pitiful sight. By stage and 
by scow, he has been confiding to us that, in order to save 
bulk, his medicines have been specially put up for him 
in highly concentrated form by London chemists. One 
little pill-box of powder is potent enough to make a dozen 
quart-bottles of effective medicine. And now all these 
precious powders have melted together, and appear like 
Dicken's stew at the Inn of the Jolly Sand-boys "all in 
one delicious gravy." The Doctor is dazed, and offers to 
white and brown alike a tin box with "Have a pastile, do." 
He wanders among the half-breeds, offering plasters for 
weak backs, which they accept with avidity as combining 
two things that the red man specially appreciates, — some- 
thing free and something medicinal. Sad-faced, the Doc- 
tor brings to me a glass case holding a dozen lozenge- 
shaped disks on each of which an infinitesimal piece of 
wood rests. "Here are some authenticated relics, but un- 
fortunately the water has made them run and I don't 
know them apart. You see they have the seal of the Car- 
thusian Monastery on the back. One of them is a piece 
of the true Cross, but I shall never be able to tell which 
it is." One by one the Doctor digs out from the wreck 
his water-soaked treasures, — a presentation "Life of the 
Countess of Munster," also a crucifix from her, and a 
beautifully-carved holy water stoup of French design 
which he declares to be "as old as the Conqueror." There 

83 



THE NEW NORTH 

is a medal of the Worshipful Company of Cutlers which 
carries with it the freedom of the City of London. An- 
other order shows the Doctor to be a Knight of the Prim- 
rose League; and, fished from under a side of bacon, is 
a print of "my great-grandfather who discovered a cure 
for scurvy." A missionary's box of toys for some Christ- 
mas tree in Far North fastnesses is opened, and here a 





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]\liss Gordon, a Fort McMurray Trader 

native stops work to lead along the sand a pink-and-blue 
alligator. 

Although the wrecked scow has its grotesque features, 
the sight is a sad one, and we are glad to leave it and pull 
across the river to Fort McMurray. We call upon Miss 
Christine Gordon, a young Scottish woman and a free- 
trader, if you please, in her own right, operating in oppo- 
sition to the great and only Hudson's Bay Company. The 
only white woman on a five hundred mile stretch of the 
Athabasca, she has lived here for years with the Indians 

s 4 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

for companions, her days being marked out by their migra- 
tions and tribal feasts. We question, "Are you not lonely, 
especially in the winter?" But she smiles and refuses to 
be regarded as heroic. "Often in the winter a trapper 
passes through, and the Indians are always coming and 
going, and they are full of interest." 

We have not walked with Miss Gordon for half an hour 
among the tepees when we discover the secret of her cheer- 
iness and content. Our happiness consists not in our 
havings but in our attitude of mind. The world is divided 
sharply into two classes. The classes are not the white and 
the black, the good and the bad, the sheep and the goats, 
as the orthodox would have us believe. We are all good 
and bad, not black or white, but varying shades of grey. 
Neither are we sheep or goats, but moral alpacas, all of 
us, — something between a sheep and a goat. But no less 
are we divided into two clear-cut classes. Each of us puts 
himself of his own volition into the class of the self-cen- 
tred, or the self-forgetting, and in the act marks himself 
as happy or unhappy. 

As Miss Gordon lifts the tent-flaps, smiles greet her 
from every home. The baby in the moss-bag is handed up 
for her inspection, and old blind Paul Cree, the Chief, 
knows her moccasined step, and rises on his elbow from 
his couch of spruce-boughs to greet her eagerly and salute 
any that she may present as friend. The Chief is in his 
ninety-sixth year and depends upon chance visitors for his 
companionship and food. Yet an assured air of dig- 
nity shows that Paul Cree is aware of the respect due to 
the Chief of the McMurrays. He addresses us in Cree, 
which Miss Gordon translates. "I am delighted that 

85 



THE NEW NORTH 

ladies have come such a long distance on purpose to see 
me. The white man is my friend. I think all white 
women must be good. Their mothers have taught them 
to be kind to old people. I am sorry I am blind. Be glad 
that you can see the water, the sky, the birds and flowers 
and the faces of little children," and the tired old head 
sinks on the fir-boughs and we are dismissed. "Be glad 
you are alive, and use that sight while you have it." It 
is the advice given by that other strong man laid on his 
back, Carlton in the Winnipeg Hospital. 

We are joined by Paul Cree's brother. He has long 
hair, and wears a pair of pince-nez as an English gallant 
wears his monocle — merely for effect, for there is nothing 
the matter with the vision of those sharp eyes. In one 
tepee a young mother is reading a service book of the 
Roman Church to her little girl of five. Across the plateau 
under the shadow of the hill we enter a camp where Miss 
Gordon has a patient with an injured hand. The cut is 
ugly and is surrounded by proud flesh, and we find that 
twice a day Miss Gordon leaves her household work and 
her little store to go across and dress this wound. 

When a schoolboy takes to his bosom a fidus Achates, 
the first thing he does is to offer to show his birds' nests ; 
so Miss Gordon introduces us to her find, — nests of the 
Gambel sparrow. W r e take two views, one of a nest of 
five eggs and another of the nesting mother. 

During the past winter Miss Gordon has fed the Indians 
in families, as they had "made little fur," entertaining 
them as courteously as you would your special friends at 
an afternoon of pink tea and pink thoughts. Visiting the 
sick, trading fur, cultivating her little garden, bring- 

86 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

ing wolf pups and bear cubs up by hand, thus this 
plucky woman passes her days. It takes the adaptability 
and dour determination of a Scot to fit into this niche. 
Your Irishwoman would last in McMurray just about 
three days. 

A new duty has been taken on by Miss Gordon, — the 
reading of the rain-gauge just installed by the Canadian 
Government. Slyly taking a peep into her records, we feel 
that they will have to be adjusted to the latitude of Ot- 
tawa when they get there, for with a true Northern con- 
tempt for fractions she has made all the decimals read as 
full fractions. The outside world which feasts on blue- 
books is apt in the future to be startled at the generous 
precipitation accorded Fort McMurray! Miss Gordon's 
ambitions run in other lines than the mathematical. 
Holding us by both hands as we bade good-by, she said, 
"Oh, that I were young again, I would learn, learn, learn. 
I would learn medicine so that I could help these poor 
creatures." Her tone of unselfish sincerity we carry 
with us as we make our way back to the scows, bearing 
with us, as token of good-will from the Gordon garden, 
radishes and lettuce for an evening salad. 

Next morning we start bird-hunting on our own ac- 
count, and get a pair of pictures as striking as those we 
have Miss Gordon to thank for — a Foxsparrow on the 
nest, then the baby sparrows but one day old. If any one 
thinks it easy to find and photograph birds' nests in the 
heart of the ancient wood on Athabascan banks in mos- 
quito time he has "another guess coming." The mosquito 
here is not a joke, not a theorem, but a stinging entity. 
During the five days we are at Fort McMurray the po- 

87 



THE NEW NORTH 

tatoes in Miss Gordon's garden have grown as many 
inches, literally an inch a day. Wood violets, wild 
roses, false Solomon-seal, and the wild sarsaparilla are 
everywhere; the air is full of the scent of growing 
things. 

Fort McMurray is the parting of the ways where the 
Hudson's Bay Company's steamer Grahame meets us, 
bringing her tale of outward-going passengers from the 




The Steamer Grahame 

North. The journey of these people from Fort McMur- 
ray to The Landing is going to be a very different thing 
from the easy floating with the current that we have en- 
joyed. All northern rivers are navigated against stream 
by "tacking," that is, towing the boats, weary mile after 
mile, "by the power o' man," the half-breed boatmen 
scrambling now on the bank, now in the water, tugging 
the heavily-laden craft after them. It is a mode of trans- 
portation that neither written word nor camera can do 
justice to. We shake hands with those going out to civil- 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

ization and take our dunnage aboard the steamer. The 
Grahame has its advantages, — clean beds, white men's 
meals served in real dishes, and best of all, a bath! 

On the Grahame we meet Mr. Harris, of Fond du Lac, 
who has come thus far to greet the incoming transport 
and who goes back again with it. Scholarly and versatile, 
we are to find in Mr. Harris a very mint of Indian lore and 
woodland wisdom and the most wonderful memory I have 
ever encountered. All the vicissitudes of a Northern life 
have failed to rub out one line of the Virgil and Horace 
of his schoolboy days, whole chapters of which, without 
one false quantity, he repeats for us in a resonant voice. 
He can recite the whole of "Paradise Lost" as faultlessly 
as Macaulay was credited with being able to do. If Mr. 
Harris could be induced to write a story of the North it 
would put to shame all the weak efforts of one-season vis- 
itors who of necessity see only the surface and have to 
guess the depths. 

As we pull out, we mentally run our fingers along the 
parallel of 56 40' North to find out by comparison, as they 
say in Chicago, "where we are at." In Europe we would 
be on the top of Ben Nevis and not so far north as Aber- 
deen. Our line of latitude run westward will cut Sitka, 
and the lone Pribilof, "where the little blue fox is bred for 
his skin and the seals they breed for themselves." Cross- 
ing the junction of the Clearwater with the Athabasca, 
we strike for the first time the trail of Sir Alexander Mac- 
kenzie, who came in by Portage la Loche, and in 1789 
traced to the sea the great river which bears his name. 
At its confluence with the Clearwater the Athabasca is per- 
haps three-quarters of a mile wide, and it maintains a 
8 89 



THE NEW NORTH 

steady current with a somewhat contracting channel to the 
point of its discharge into Lake Athabasca in latitude 
58 36' North. 

In all Canada there is no more interesting stretch of 
waterway than that upon which we are entering. An 
earth-movement here has created a line of fault clearly 





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An Oil Derrick on the Athabasca 



visible for seventy or eighty miles along the river-bank, 
out of which oil oozes at frequent intervals. Count von 
Hammerstein, building derricks from point to point along 
the stream, has put in much time, toil, and money in oil- 
development here. Our traverse of those ninety miles of 
Athabasca Rapids has given us respect for the labor and 
determination which in this wilderness has erected these 

90 



NINETY MILES OF RAPIDS 

giant derricks. Looking at them, we waft a wish that the 
plucky prospector may reap his reward and abundantly 
strike oil. The Count tells us of striking one hundred and 




Tar Banks on the Athabasca 



fifty feet of rock salt while "punching" one of his oil-shafts 
through the ground. Here are overhanging dykes of lime- 
stone ; and out of the lime and clay shoot up splendid trees 
of pine, poplar, and spruce. 

91 



THE NEW NORTH 

At Fort McKay, thirty miles below McMurray, a fine 
seam of coal is exposed on the river-bank. It is bitumi- 
nous, and can be used for blacksmithing, but probably not 
for welding. Ochre is found on these banks, with sand 
of the very best quality for making glass, while extensive 
sulphur deposits have been discovered on the east side of 
the river between Fort McMurray and the lake. On the 
Clearwater are medicinal springs whose output tastes very 
much like Hunyadi water. 

Tar there is, too, in plenty. Out of the over-hanging 
banks it oozes at every fissure, and into some of the bitumi- 
nous tar-wells we can poke a twenty foot pole and find no 
resistance. These tar-sands lithologically may be de- 
scribed as a soft sandstone, the cementing material of 
which is a bitumen or petroleum. They are estimated to 
have a distribution of over five hundred square miles. 
Where it is possible to expose a section, as on a river-bank, 
the formation extends from one hundred and twenty-five 
to two hundred feet in depth, the bitumen being distrib- 
uted through the sands. 

Twelve miles below the last exposure of the tar-sands 
and about two miles above the mouth of Red Earth Creek 
a copious saline spring bubbles up, and there is an escape 
of sulphurretted hydrogen whose unmistakable odour fol- 
lows the boat for half a mile. Kipling was right when he 
said, "Smells are surer than sounds or sights." 

We speak only of what we observe from the deck of a 
boat as we pass down this wonderful river. What is hid- 
den is a richer story which only the coming of the railroad 
can bring to light. 



CHAPTER VI 

FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

"Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their humble joys and destiny obscure." 

— Gray's Elegy. 

At seven in the morning of Sunday, June 21st, we enter 
Lake Athabasca, and catch our first glimpse of Fort 
Chipewyan. An acceptance of the invitation, "Come, 
shake your leg," has kept the men busy half the night 
over a hot sequence of Red River jigs among "pieces" on 
the lower deck, and we have this superb sweep almost to 
ourselves. 

The great lake-scape is blue and green and grey and 
opaline as the sun strikes it and the surface breaks to a 
south wind. Ours is the one craft on this inland sea, but 
overhead a whole navy of clouds manoeuvres, the ships of 
the ghostly argosy doubling themselves in the lake. As 
we draw in, the village takes shape. What haunts us 
as we look at the white houses, that crescent beach of 
pinkest sand? We have it! It is a print, an old wood- 
cut of "Russian America" that we used to pore over in 
the days when one wore "pinnies" of flour-sacking, and 
"hankies" were made from meal-bags. 

At one end of the village are the little smithy of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company and the pretentious buildings of their 
establishment. At the other gibbous horn of this Athens 

93 



THE NEW NORTH 

of the Athabasca rise the steeples and convent-school of 
the Roman Church, with the free-trading-post of Colin 
Fraser. Midway between is the little Church of England, 
and higher up and farther back the Barracks of the Royal 
Northwest Mounted Police. The white-washed homes of 
the employes of The Company, little match-boxes daz- 




Fort Chipewyan, Lake Athabasca 

zling in the sun, stretch from one end of the beach to the 
other. In among the half-breed populace stalk policeman 
and priest, red jacket keeping the dark-skinned people 
straight in this world and black robe laying out conditions 
for the world to come. So is Chipewyan fate chequered 
with the rouge ct nolr of compulsion and expediency. 

Fort Chipewyan is the oldest post in the North, and 
every boulder of red gneissic rock, if we could interrogate 

94 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

it, has a story to tell. Peter Pond, of the North-West 
Company, in 1778 built a post on the Athabasca River 
thirty miles to the south of the lake. The far-seeing 
Alexander Mackenzie, in the interests of the same com- 
pany, sent his cousin Roderick ten years later to build 
Fort Chipewyan on the lake, and for over a century this 
was the entrepot and emporium of the whole North. The 
Hudson's Bay Company meanwhile were maintaining a 
post, Fort Wedderburne, not far away on Potato Island, 
and upon the amalgamation of the Companies in 182 1 they 
took possession of the present Fort Chipewyan. 

This metropolis is one hundred and twenty years old. 
Chipewyan was doing business at the same old stand be- 
fore Toronto was the capital of Upper Canada, while Ot- 
tawa was still unheard of, and when of Chicago not even, 
the Fort Dearborn nucleus had been built. 1788! We 
wonder if the old ox that conveys our "cassette" and 
"pieces" up to the big gateway of The Company's quad- 
rangle was a drawer of wood and drinker of water at that 
date. He looks as if he might have been. George III 
was reigning in England when Fort Chipewyan was built, 
Arkwright was making his spinning jenny, and Watts ex- 
perimenting with the steam-engine. Sir Joshua Reynolds 
painted his pictures, Burns, a young man of twenty-nine, 
was busy with his ballads. In London a little baby saw 
the light of day, whom the world afterwards hailed as Lord 
Byron. Three British boys might have been seen with 
arms thrown over each other's shoulders, "dreaming 
greatly" — Coleridge aged sixteen, young Walter Scott, 
seventeen, and Wordsworth just eighteen. Across the 
Channel the French Revolution was at its height. Shelley 

95 



THE NEW NORTH 

and Keats were not yet born. Down on the Atlantic sea- 
board of America a new people just twelve years before 
had gone through the birth-throes of nationhood. It is 
a far call. 

Scraping the yellow lichens off the old sun-dial, we ad- 
just our bearings. We are 1 1 1 ° West of Greenwich and 
in latitude 58 45' North. Our parallel carried eastward 
would strike the Orkneyan skerries and pass through 
Stromness. All untouched by the development of that 
busy continent to the south which has grown up within its 
lifetime, Chipewyan is a little pearl of the periwigged 
days of the early Georges. From its red sands, tamarack 
swamps, and mossy muskeg one almost expects to see 
arise the forms of those great of old who outfitted here, 
making Chipewyan the base of their northward explora- 
tions. The ghostly company is a goodly one — Sir Alex- 
ander Mackenzie, Sir George Simpson, and Sir John 
Franklin (their honorary prefixes coming to them in the 
after days as reward of their labors), Back and Rich- 
ardson and Rae, and in later days that young stripling 
curate who was afterwards to be known throughout the 
world of letters as Bishop Bompas, the "Apostle of the 
North." Then there is the great unnamed horde who 
rested tired limbs at Chipewyan on their northward jour- 
neys, each on his own mission — fur-traders and hunters 
of big game, devoted nuns and silent priests, the infre- 
quent scientist, and the hundreds of Klondikers, their 
hearts hot with the greed for gold. These all through the 
century have enjoyed as we now enjoy the spontaneous 
hospitality of this little bit of Britain which floats the 
Union Jack from its fort walls, and whose people, brown 

96 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

and white, when the belated news of the passing of Vic- 
toria the Great reached this her northern outpost, gath- 
ered on the beach and bewailed aloud their personal loss. 
We seem to hear again the far-flung cry "The Queen is 
dead! The Queen is dead!" from the half-breed run- 
ners coming in that Christmas Day across the winter 
ice. 

Mackenzie made Chipewyan his headquarters for eight 
years. It was from here he started on his voyage to the 
Arctic Sea in 1789, and three years later on that other 
history-making journey to the far Pacific. Sir John 
Franklin outfitted here for his two land- journeys — in July, 
1820, with Dr. Richardson, and again in 1825. Chipew- 
yan is a mine of interest. We almost begrudge time given 
to the dainty meals of our hostess, Mrs. William Johnson, 
and the hours spent between her lavender-scented sheets. 

In the loft above the office of the H. B. Company, in 
among old flintlock rifles and discarded ox-yokes, we 
browse through the daily records of The Company, old 
journals written by the Factors at the close of their day's 
work through the years and here preserved for our in- 
quisitive eyes. Sitting on the floor, making extracts from 
these tomes, one has the half-guilty feeling of being caught 
poking into a tomb. 

On this page the ink is thin and one can see the old 
writer thawing out his frozen ink-pot of stone at the end 
of a tired day and sitting down to write his simple tale. 
Here are finger-marks where the blood of a buffalo gives 
a marginal note. The journalist had been called away 
from his writing to weigh and pay for some fresh meat. 
Drops from a tallow candle show the light of other days. 

97 



THE NEW NORTH 

A pressed mosquito of the vintage of 1790 is very sug- 
gestive. We picture the trivial round and common task 
of the man who writes, see him exchanging fathoms of 
tobacco for beaver-pelts in those long, cold winters, and 
eagerly hunger with him for the signs presaging the go- 
ing-out of the ice and the coming-in of Spring. We fol- 
low out the short Summer with him and revel in its per- 
petual daylight. With him we make the fall fishery and 
shoot our winter's supply of waveys and southward-fly- 
ing cranes. We wonder, as he wondered, what news the 
next packet will bring from the old folks in the Orkneys 
or the Hebrides. We study, as he studied, the problem 
of governing his servants, placating the Indians, and 
making enough fur to satisfy that inexorable Board of 
Directors back in London whose motto is "Skin for 
skin." 

It has been a grim enough life as the author of this 
journal records it. He is far from those who direct his 
fate, and recognition and reward are slow in coming. 
Companionship and the gentle arts of "outside" are de- 
nied him. He must make his own world and rear within 
it his dusky brood, that they in honourable service may fol- 
low his round of "work done squarely and unwasted days." 
What made the charm of this life co these men? It is 
hard to see. The master of the post was also master of 
the situation, and an autocrat in his community, a little 
Fur King, a Captain of Industry. A thing was law be- 
cause he said it. And isn't it Caesar himself who de- 
clares, "Better be first in a little Iberian village than sec- 
ond in Rome?" 

We get a delightful picture in an entry under the date of 

98 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

Wednesday, 23rd May, 1827, when Sir John Franklin 
was on his way back to England at the end of his second 
journey. 

''To-day William McGillivary and Katherine Stewart, daughter 
of Alexander Stewart, Chief Factor, were joined in holy wedlock 
by Captain John Franklin, R.N., Commander of the Land Arctic 
Expedition." 

Great is the force of example, for five days later appears 
the entry 

"This evening the ceremonial of marriage took place between 
Robert McYicar, Esq., and Christy McBeath. Captain Franklin 
acted on the occasion as clergyman. The ceremony o'er, the 
evening was agreeably spent in a family assembly." 

Looking at these records, we are reminded of a not- 
very-well-known story of international courtesy which 
connects itself with the third and ill-fated journey of 
Franklin. Old Sir John, then in his sixtieth year, had 
sailed from England in an attempt at the Northwest Pas- 
sage. Years passed and no word came from the explorer, 
and in 1852 the ice-desert was still mute. 

In this year, Sir Edward Belcher in the Resolute headed 
one of the many Arctic Relief Expeditions, subsequently 
abandoning his boat in the ice off Melville Island. Next 
year the American whaler Henry George met the deserted 
Resolute in sound condition about forty miles from Cape 
Mercy; she must have drifted through Barrow Strait, 
Lancaster Sound, and Baffin Bay. She was recovered, 
the Government of the United States bought her and with 
international compliments presented her in perfect condi- 

99 



THE NEW NORTH 

tion to Queen Victoria in 1856. The old ship was broken 
up about thirty years ago, and from the soundest of her 
timbers a solid desk was made by direction of Queen Vic- 
toria, who presented it to the then President of the United 
States. This is the desk which stands in President Taft's 
reception room to-day, and on it the papers of eight ad- 
ministrations have been written. 

There is living as well as buried history in Chipewyan. 
A stroll from one end of its lacustrine street to the other is 
lush with interest. We call upon Colin Fraser, whose 
father was piper to Sir George Simpson. Colin treats us 
to a skirl of the very pipes which announced the approach 
of Simpson whenever that little Northern autocrat, dur- 
ing his triumphal progress through a bailiwick as big as 
Europe, made his way into a new fort. 

With the echo of the "Gay Gordons" in our ears we 
pass into the largest convent in the North country, man- 
aged by the Grey Nuns of Montreal. Sister Brunelle 
came into the North in 1866. Forty-two years in a con- 
vent-school of the Northland! It makes one gasp. 

These Indian schools, assisted by the Canadian Govern- 
ment, catch the little Indians in the camps and hold their 
prey on school-benches from the age of four to fourteen. 
One boy is dumb, another a hunchback. In a corner we 
came upon a poor old derelict of the camps, a Cree woman, 
paralysed and mentally deranged, who within these quiet 
walls has found harbour. The kiddies are taught one day 
in French and the next day in English ; but when they hide 
behind their spellers to talk about the white visitors, the 
whisper is in Chipewyan. What do they learn? Read- 
ing, (vertical) writing, arithmetic, hymns, and hoeing 

100 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

potatoes, grammar, sewing and shoemaking, and one 
more branch, never taught in Southern schools. When 
the fall fishery comes, the nuns kilt up their skirts, slates 
are shoved far back into desks, and shepherdess and sheep 
(young brown moose!) together clean the whitefish which 




Three of a Kind 

are to furnish meals for a twelve-month to come. If fish 
be brain food, then should this convent of Chipewyan 
gather in medals, degrees, and awards, capturing for its 
black-eyed boys Rhodes scholarships ad lib. 

Back of the convent stretches a farm with an historic 
record. It was from this enclosure, tilled by the priests 
and their proteges, that the sample of wheat came which 

IOI 



THE NEW NORTH 

at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in competition 
with the wheats of the world took the bronze medal. This 
wheat ran sixty-eight pounds to the bushel. 

We linger in the convent, looking at the rows of tiny 
beds neat and immaculate, each covered with its little blue 
counterpane. Sister Jigot, with the air of divulging a 
state secret, tells that the pretty bed-covering is flour-sack- 
ing, that it is dyed on the premises from a recipe brought 
out of Chipewyan woods. In the long winter evenings 
these good step-mothers of savages do all their reading 
and sewing before six o'clock. The mid-winter sun sinks 
at four, and two hours of candle-light is all that the frugal 
exchequer can afford. "What in the world do you do 
after six?" I venture; for well we know those busy fingers 
are not content to rest in idle laps. "Oh ! we knit, open- 
ing the stove-doors to give us light." Many a time are 
we to throw a glance backward through the years to these 
devoted souls upon Athabascan shores, trying to graft 
a new civilisation on an old stock, and in the process econ- 
omising their candles like Alfred of old. 

Both Protestant and Roman missionaries are amateur 
doctors and we find a stimulating rivalry in bodily and 
spiritual ministrations. At the Church of England Mis- 
sion we are shown with triumph a piece of bone salved 
from the leg of an injured Indian. Afterward we learn 
that the peripatetic patient accepted the Church of Eng- 
land treatment in the daytime, and in the evening shadows 
was carried across the rocks to the shrine of Rome. Poor 
chap, he died in the process ! But while he lived he stim- 
ulated trade, and his memory lingers to point a moral and 
adorn a tale. If there had but been a Presbyterian Church 

102 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

within range, he might have comforted himself with the 
thought that it had all been comfortably fore-ordained. 

An interesting family lives next to the English Mission 
— the Loutits. The father tells of the days when as a 
young man he served The Company, and "for breakfast 
on the march they gave you a clubhand showed you a rab- 
bit-track." There were Loutits in Chipewyan as far back 
as the old journals reach. The Scottish blood has inter- 
mingled with that of Cree and Chipewyan and the result- 
ant in this day's generation is a family of striking young 
people — the girls good to look at and clever in beadwork 
and quill-ornamentation, the boys skilled in nemoral arts 
and holding the strong men's records of the North. 

George Loutit without help brought a scow with four 
thousand pounds from Athabasca Landing to Chipewyan 
through the ninety miles of rapids. Llis brother Billy, 
carrying a special dispatch of the Mounted Police, ran 
with a hand-sled (and no dogs) from Chipewyan to Fort 
Smith and back in three days — a distance of two hundred 
miles at least. Once, when the river rose suddenly in the 
night, Billy unloaded nine tons from one scow to another, 
astonishing the owners, who snored while Billy was toil- 
ing upward in the night. The rivermen tell of George 
Loutit's quarreling with a man one afternoon in a saloon 
at Edmonton and throwing his adversary out of the win- 
dow. When he heard him slump, George immediately 
thought of the North as a most desirable place and started 
hot-foot for Athabasca Landing, a hundred miles away. 
He arrived there in time for noon luncheon next day. 

At the H. B. Co. end of the village we find Pierre Mer- 
credi in charge. A French Bishop once wanted to train 

103 



THE NEW NORTH 

him for the priesthood, but it is peltries and not souls that 
Pierre is after. His forebears were Irish McCarthys, but 
this name failed to fall trippingly from the tongue of 
French priests, and became corrupted into the Mercredi 
as he now signs it. 

Throughout the journals of the last forty years we run 
across such entries as these: — "Wyllie at the forge," 
"Wyllie making nails," "Wyllie straightening the fowling- 
pieces," "Wyllie making sled-runners," "This day Wyl- 
lie made a coffin for an Indian." We step into the old 
man's smithy, and he turns to greet us with an out- 
stretched hand and a "Good mornin'," in richest Doric. 
The date 1863 cut into the wooden foundation of his forge 
marks the year when Wyllie came to Chipewyan. He was 
born in the Orkneys, and had never seen a city in the Old 
World. Coming out to America in a sailing vessel of The 
Company by way of Hudson Bay, he threaded the inland 
waterway which brought him to Chipewyan without see- 
ing a city in America. Torontonians think the hub of the 
universe is their capital on Lake Ontario. A smart young 
man from Toronto filtered in one day to Chipewyan, and 
asked the old blacksmith, "Came from the Old Country, 
didn't you? What did you think of Toronto?" "Naeth- 
ing, I didna see the place." 

Mr. Wyllie has never seen an electric light nor a rail- 
way train nor a two-story building nor a telegraph wire 
nor a telephone. In the forty-five years in which he has 
presided over this forge, the limits of his wanderings have 
been McMurray on the south, Fort Smith on the north, 
Fond du Lac on the east, the Chutes of the Peace on the 
west. To him these are innocuous days of ease, in which 

104 



FORT CHI PEW Y AN PAST AND PRESENT 

we are falling into luxuriousness with all its weakening 
influence. "It was much better in the old days when we 
had only dried meat and fish-oil. Nowadays, when we 
have flour and tinned meats and preserved fruits, all my 
teeth are coming out !" 

No one feels like smiling a smile of superiority in talk- 
ing with old Mr. Wyllie. He has taught himself the gen- 
tle arts of gunsmithing and blacksmithing. The tools that 
we see all around us are marvels of mechanical skill and 
would be the joy of a modern Arts and Crafts Exhibition. 
His sledges and augurs, planes and chisels have been made 
by the old man out of pig iron which came as ballast in the 
holds of those old sailing ships which beat their way into 
Fort Churchill through Hudson Strait. The hand-made 
tools are set into convenient handles of moose-horn and 
bone. Clever indeed is the workmanship that Wyllie has 
done with them. The last triumph from this unique forge 
was the welding of the broken shaft of the little tug Prim- 
rose . The steamer Grahame was built at Chipewyan of 
whipsawn lumber, and much of her steel and ironwork was 
wrought on Wyllie's forge. 

W T yllie left the Scottish Isles when a mere lad, but they 
are still "Home" to him and he tells us that this autumn 
he is going back on a visit. It was a prototype of Wyllie's 

"From the lone sheiling and the misty island, 
Mountains divide us and a waste of seas. 
But still the heart, the heart is Highland, 
And we in dreams behold the Hebrides," 

who prayed "O, Lord, we beseech Thee, send down Thy 
covenanted blessin' on the Muckle Hebrides, the Lesser 
9 105 




Samples of Woman's Work of the Far North. {See page 107.) 

IO6 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

Hebrides, and the adjacent islands of Great Britain and 
Ireland." Talking with the old gentleman, you are con- 
scious of the innate moral strength rather than the me- 
chanical skill of the craftsman. Instinctively you feel the 
splendid power of his presence and come out from his 
forge murmuring, "Thank God I have seen a man this 
day." Wyllie belongs to the age of the old journals, to 
the days that bred Joe Gargerys and old Adams in whom 
appeared "the constant service of the antique world." 

Mr. and Airs. William Johnson, with generous courtesy, 
have made us their guests while we stay, and their refined 
home is a clear delight. Mr. Johnson is as clever a man 
as Mr. Wyllie, but in other lines. Without ever having 
seen an electric light, he learned by study and research 
more about electricity than nine men out of ten know who 
go through Electrical Training Schools. With the knowl- 
edge thus gained he constructed and put into working use 
an electric-light plant at Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie. 
Far up here on the map, too, the "Judge," as he is lovingly 

EXPLANATION OF PLATE ON THE OPPOSITE PAGE 

A and C — Muski-moots, or bags used by the duck-hunter for his game. Made by Dog- 
Rib women, of babiche, or lawhide of the moose or caribou. 

B — Velvet leggings richly embroidered in violet-coloured bead-work, made by Mrs. 
(Archdeacon) Macdonald, a full-blooded Loucheaux woman. 

D — Wall-pocket of white deerskin embroidered in silk. Made by a Rabbit-Skin woman 
at Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle. 

E — Wall-pocket ornamented with porcupine-quill work, made by a Yellow-Knife Indian 
woman at Fort Resolution on Great Slave Lake. 

F — Fire-bag, or toDacco-pouch, made of two claws of the black bear. Trie work of a 
Beaver Indian woman at Yermilion-on-the-Peace. 

G — Fire-bag of velvet ornamented with silk-work, made by Chipewyan woman at Fond 
du Lac, Lake Athabasca. 

IT — Velvet watch-bag embroidered in silk, made by Slavi Indian woman at Fort Provi- 
dence, at the head of Mackenzie River. 

I — Watch-pocket of smoked moose-skin, embroidered in silk-work, made by a Cree girl 
at Fort McMurray on the Athabasca. 

J — Armlets ornamented in porcupine quills, made by a half-breed woman on the Liard 
River (a feeder of the Mackenzie). 

K — Three hat bands — the first two ornamented with porcupine quills, and the last in 
silk embroidery — made by Chipewyan woman at Fond du Lac, Lake Athabasca. 

L — Beautiful belt of porcupine work, made by a half-breed woman at Fort Nelson on 
the Liard (a feeder of the Mackenzie). 

M — Armlets of porcupine-quill work, made by half-breed girl at Fort Chipewyan. 

I07 



THE NEW NORTH 

called, taught himself all about watches, and he is now 
Father Time for the whole Mackenzie District, regulating 
and mending every timepiece in the country. The cor- 
rected watches are carried to their owners by the next 
obliging person who passes the post, where the owner is 
notching of! the days on a piece of stick while he waits. A 
watch, the works of which were extracted from three old 
ones and assembled within one case by this Burbank of 
Watchdom, found its way down to Chicago. The jeweller 
into whose hands it fell declared that among all his work- 
men there was not one who could have duplicated the job. 
Chipewyan is a bird paradise ; the whole woods are vocal 
to-day. In the autumn, wonderful hunts are made of the 
southward-flying cranes, geese, and waveys, thousands of 
these great birds being killed and salted and put in ice 
chambers for winter use. If the mosquitoes were not so 
bad we would spend hours in the woods here with "God's 
jocund little fowls." These sweet songsters seem to have 
left far behind them to the south all suspicion of bigger 
bipeds. We hear the note of the ruby-crowned kinglet 
(rcgulus calendula) which some one says sounds like 
"Chappie, chappie, jackfish." The American red-start 
comes to our very feet, the yellow warbler, the Tennessee 
warbler, the red-eyed vireo, and the magnolia warbler, 
which last, a young Cree tells us, is "High-Chief-of-all- 
the-small-birds." Rusty blackbirds are here with slate- 
coloured junco, and we see a pair of purple finches. W r e are 
fortunate in getting a picture of the nest of the Gambel 
sparrow and two of the nesting white-throated sparrow. 
They are ferreted out for us by the sharp eyes of a girl who 
says her Cree name is "A-wandering-bolt-of-night-light- 

108 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

ning!" At our feet blossom cinquefoil, immortelles, the 
dainty flowers of the bed-straw. 

It has been a full day, and by the way the "permits" are 
opening up in the settlement when we come back, prom- 
ises to be a full night. These men have waited a whole 
year for a drink, and now the lids can't come off quick 
enough. "Come, hurry up, Flynn, we're all as dry as 
wooden gods, we're so dry that we're brittle — we'd break 
if you hit us." "Well, I'm hurrying; I'm as much in a 
rush as any of you; I'm so warped the hoops are falling 
off." 

It doesn't take long to polish off the permits proper (or 
improper). By morning all this liquor, imported for 
"medicinal purposes," is gone. Whoever in Chipewyan 
is thoughtless enough to get ill during the next twelve 
months must fall back on the medicine-chest of the Eng- 
lish Mission or of the Grey Nuns. Anything strong will 
do for the creation of joyousness during the remaining 
three hundred and sixty-four days of the year — Jamaica 
ginger, lavender-water, flavouring extracts. 

Next morning the bon vivants of Chipewyan are down 
to essences of lemon, vanilla, and ginger, which have been 
specially imported as stimulating beverages. We ask if 
they are any good. "Good? I should say so, and one 
bottle just makes a drink. Can I offer" (politely) "to 
exhilarate you ladies with vanilla?" The most jovial of 
the celebrants tells of his early imbibition of red ink. "I 
used to get a gallon of red ink with my outfit every year, 
and it gives you the good feel, but when this new Com- 
missioner comes in he writes, T don't see how you can use 
a gallon of red ink at your post in one year,' and I writes 

109 



THE NEW NORTH 

back, 'What we don't use we abuse,' and next year he 
writes to me, 'It's the abuse we complain of,' and," with 
regretful reminiscence, "I got no more red ink." The 
substitution of red tape for the carmine fluid that inebri- 
ates is an innovation not appreciated. 

The old records fascinate us. We spend every spare 
moment before the coming of the treaty party in tran- 
scribing choice bits from them. There were drinks and 
drinkers in these old days. 

"1830, Friday 1st. January. All hands came as is customary 
to wish us the compliments of the season, and they were treated 
with cakes each, a pipe, and two feet tohacco. In the evening 
they have the use of the hall to dance, and are regaled with a 
beverage." 



i s» 



"1830, April 50. Poitras, a Chipewyan half-breed, arrived, and 
delivered 81 made beavers in prime furs, though he says he has 
been sickly all winter. I therefore presented him with a complete 
clothing and a Feather." 



'S 



"1S30, May 1 6th. One of our Indians having been in company 
with Indians from Isle a la Crosse got married to one of their 
young women, consequently has followed the father-in-law and 
taken his hunt away from us." 

"1830, August 13th. One Indian, The Rat, passed us on the 
Portage, he was treated with a dram for 'Old Acquaintance' sake." 

On New Year's Eve the old chronicler drops into verse. 
In tall thin letters in faded ink we read, 

"If New Year's Eve the wind blow south, 
It betokeneth warmth and growth ; 
If west, much milk, and fish in the sea; 
If north, much storms and cold will be; 
If east, the trees will bear much fruit ; 
If northeast, flee it man and beast." 
IIO 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

"183 1, January 1. The thermometer this morning was 29 below 
cypher." 

"183 1, May 22. They bring- intelligence that Monsi-toosese- 
capo is at their tent, having lately joined them, without his family 
of two women and two children, who perished during the winter. 
From his frequent prevarication when questioned by the other 
Crees, they suspect he has murdered and eaten them." 

"1831, May 30th. The fellow has got too large a family for 
a Fort Hunter, he cannot feed them with unlimited Indulgence 
and supply us at the same time." [Would Mr. Roosevelt second 
this ?] 

"1831, June ipth. Two Chipewyans came from the Long 
Point informing us that Big Head's son is dead, that Big Head 
has thrown away his property in consequence of the loss of his 
boy, and that he told them to beg a shirt and tobacco. The shirt, 
of course, I did not send, the scoundrel is not worthy of it. I 
merely sent him six inches of tobacco with reluctance. That 
cursed family is a perfect pest to the place, and it is my humble 
opinion that the hand of Providence sends them the present calam- 
ity for their ill deeds. "[ !] 

"1834, November 2/th. A party of the Isle a la Crosse Indians 
with old Nulooh and Gauche cast up. They have riot come in 
this direction for the sake of running about, some of their rela- 
tions is dead, and in their own words they are travelling on strange 
lands to kill grief, not an unusual custom among the Northern 
Indians." 

"1865, October 23rd. We were surprised yesterday at the ar- 
rival of a Protestant missionary, a Mr. Bompas from England ; 
he came in a canoe from the Portage with Sylvestre and Vadnoit." 

"1866, January 1st. The whole Establishment breakfasted in 
the Hall and in the evening a Ball came off with great eclat. Two 
marriages also to-day, Francis Villebrun to Marie Cyre, and Bap- 
tiste St. Cyre, Jr., to Justine McKay — so that all things considered 

III 



THE NEW NORTH 

the New Year was ushered in with a tremendous row ! Verily, 
times are improving in the North." 

"1866, January 2nd. The men are rather seedy to-day after 
their tremendous kick-up of yesterday." 

"1840, January 25th. The object of sending LaHeur to the Little 
Island is that he may procure a kind of willow that the Canadians 
call 'Courmier,' the bark of which scraped and boiled in water 
has healing qualities which they think will be of great service 
for Hassel's complaint. Confidence in anything is half the 
cure."[ !] 

"1840, February 1st. Hassel is still without much appearance 
for the better, and at his earnest request was bled." 

" 1841, December 31st. The men from the Fishery made their 
appearance as usual at this time, and as usual, too, the best we 
had (which by-the-by is not great as will be seen by this journal) 
was served out to them. The other men had the time to themselves 
to prepare for the holiday of to-morrow, for the Jour de Van is 
the greatest day of the Canadians in these distant Northern posts. 
To finish things properly there is still wanting the famous aqua 
vitae, which we are sorry to state is not in our means to furnish. 
Adieu the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-one !" 

"1842, February 13th. The Rev. Mr. Evans proposing to take 
his departure to-morrow for Isle a la Crosse edified us with a 
farewell service, several of the women and children were baptized, 
and Flett and Hassel were married to their wives." 

From the records we compile this Chipewyan calen- 
dar: — 

March 17th, House-flies. 
April 8th, Grey goose seen. 
April nth, Catkins. 
April 1 2th, Barking crows. 
April 19th, Blackbirds and mosquitoes. 

112 



FORT CHIPEWYAN PAST AND PRESENT 

April 2 ist, Plover, two hawks, and a butterfly. 

April 22nd, Gulls, white waveys, robins, 

April 28th, White cranes. 

April 30th, Frogs, most of snow gone. 

May 2nd, Dark butterfly, four purple crocuses. 

May 4th, Frogs noisy, bumble bees. 

May 5th, Nearly clear of ice. 

May 8th, Water from Peace River flowing into lake. An Eagle. 

May 10th, Sand martins. Ice drifting in channel in front of fort. 

May 20th, Swans passing north. 

May 2 1 st, Trees bursting into leaf. 

July nth, Strawberries and raspberries. 

August 18th, Cranes passing south. 

October nth, Small birds passing south. 

October 12th, First ptarmigan seen about the fort. 

October 24th, Lake in front closed up this morning. 



CHAPTER VII 

LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

"Afar from stir of streets, 
The city's dust and din, 
What healing silence meets 
And greets us gliding in ! 

"The noisy strife 

And bitter carpings cease. 
Here is the lap of life, 

Here are the lips of peace." 

— C. G. D. Roberts. 

For fresh woods and pastures new this Friday, June 
26th! Our little "bunch" breaks up. Mr. Brabant and 
Mrs. Harding, of the Hudson's Bay Company contingent, 
go on in the Grahamc to Smith's Landing, and with them 
the two detachments of the R. N. W. M. P. As we shake 
hands with the police party, we wonder what Fate has in 
store for each of us. Breaking off at Fort Resolution, 
Great Slave Lake, and trending eastward by canoe over 
unchartered ways, will they reach salt water on Hudson 
Bay as they hope ? 

For our two selves, great good fortune is ours. The 
Canadian Government Indian Treaty party, consisting of 
Mr. Conroy in command, Mr. Laird as secretary, Dr. 
Donald, and Mr. Mooney in charge of the commissariat, 
with Constable Gairdner, R. N. W. M. P., as escort, has 
just come down the Peace. To-day they pay treaty in 

114 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

Chipewyan, and this afternoon start for far Fond du Lac, 
at the eastern extremity of Lake Athabasca. The little 
H. B. tug Primrose will tow them and their outfit in a 
York-boat and a scow, and the captain has been per- 
suaded to allow us, too, to take our blankets and come along, 




Lake Athabasca in Winter 

sleeping on the deck. The Primrose from stein to stern 
is not big enough to swing a cat in, but who wants to 
swing a cat? It is blue Lake Athabasca that we long to 
see; no white woman has yet traversed it to its eastern ex- 
tremity and we would go if we had to work our passage at 
the sweeps of the scow. 

Athabasca Lake (whose name means "In Muskeg 

115 



THE NEW NORTH 

Abounding"), is two hundred miles long, with thirty-five 
miles at its greatest width. It lies in a general easterly 
and westerly direction. No survey has been made of the 
lake; its height above ocean level is seven hundred feet, 
and it covers perhaps three thousand square miles. Its 
chief feeder is the Athabasca River, down which we have 
come from the south. This stream, assisted by the Peace, 
is fast filling up with detritus the western portion of Lake 
Athabasca. There is a marked contrast between the 
upper and lower coasts of the lake. The north shore con- 
sists of Laurentian gneiss with a sparse wood growth ; the 
south bank for the most part is low, the formation being a 
cretaceous sandstone. Ice holds fast this beautiful sheet 
for six months every year. As we puff along the surface 
of its incomparable blue it is hard to realise that, although 
the Peace and Athabasca Rivers open their icy mouths 
about May-day, parts ot the lake are not free for travel un- 
til mid-May. The lake freezes fast at Fort Chipewyan 
some time in November. Lying on the deck of the tug, we 
look down and take inventory of our odd tow. Just be- 
hind comes the scow. It holds wood for the engine, a 
long sled, a canoe, a "skift," all this year's trading sup- 
plies for Fond du Lac, and half a dozen chained husky 
dogs. Trailing the scow is a York-boat carrying the 
treaty party and Mr. Harris. 

It is late in the afternoon when we pull out from 
Chipewyan, but the sun is still heaven-high, with the off- 
shore air a tonic. At seven o'clock Colin Fraser's boat 
passes us with Bishop Grouard standing upright at the 
prow. This stately figure, clear-cut against the sky-line, 
may well stand as the type of the pioneer Church of the 

116 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

Northland. On the little deck we can use the camera 
with facility at ten in the evening, and the typewriter all 



night. 



The light manifestation is a marvel and wooes us 




Bishop Grouard 

from sleep. Have we not all the tame nights of the after- 
days for slumber? Here we lose the moon and those 
friendly stars which at Pelican Portage dipped almost to 
meet our hands. No more are we to see them until the 

117 



THE NEW NORTH 

Arctic has been reached and we have turned southward 
many, many hundreds of miles. 

Hours since all the badinage was silenced in the York- 
boat behind us. On board the Primrose the mate sleeps, 
and Captain Prothero has the wheel. I creep along the 
wobbly gunwale to sit out a four hours' watch with him. 
"I never saw any one navigate as you do, captain, you 
seem to have neither chart nor compass." 

"No," assents he, biting hard on the little black pipe, 
"we just go by the power o' man," and with the words a 
sharp turn of the wheel lurches us out from the lee of a 
batture. The jolt jerks up its passengers in the semi- 
detached steerage. A growling of huskies, a kick, and 
a muttered adjuration in Cree, and all is silent again. 

By six o'clock every one is astir, and Saturday is a long 
glorious daw At noon we stop to take aboard an Indian 
who hails us from the scrub-pine, sore afraid that he will 
miss connection with his live dollar treaty present from the 
Government. It is good to stretch out on the grass after 
this somewhat restricted Primrose path of dalliance. In 
front of us extends a long row of islands, in the hot haze 
suspended midway between blue of lake and blue of sky. 
Their covering of baby-willows suggests a face guilty of a 
three days' beard. We rest, so far as the mosquitoes 
think it proper we should rest, on a bed of reindeer moss 
(cladonia rangiferinaf), the tripe dc roclic of the North. 
This constitutes almost the sole winter-food of the rein- 
deer, its gelatinous or starchy matter giving the nutritive 
property to the odd-looking stuff. Reindeer-moss has 
saved the life of many an Indian lost in these woods. We 
try it, and find the taste slightly pungent and acrid; but 

118 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

when boiled it forms a jelly said to be nourishing and 
tonic. 

No orders are given when we land, and we study coun- 
tenances and actions to guess the time-limit of our tether. 
For twenty-four hours we have wondered if there were 
trout in Lake Athabasca and if they would rise to the fly. 
With a borrowed rod we take a canoe and off the shadow 




The Modern Note-book 



of a cottonwood point try a cast at random. The gut car- 
ries three flies — a brown hackle, a coachman, with a Jock 
Scott at the tail — a rainbow aggregation. To the coach- 
man we get a rise and it takes three of us to land him. 
There are no scales; so his weight must forever be unre- 
corded, but as we lay him out he measures just a trifle 
over twenty-three inches, as beautiful a lake trout as ever 
sent thrill up and down a sympathetic spine. Bye-and-bye 

119 



THE NEW NORTH 

this road we travel is going to be listed on the sporting 
routes of the world, and tired souls from the Seven Seas 
with rod and gun will here find Nepenthe. 

Clutching our catch, we step gingerly along an out- 
stretched oar and climb on board. The orders of the cap- 
tain to the mate are sporty and suggest turf rather than 
surf. "Kick her up, Mac!" "Give her a kick ahead!" 
"Who-o-oa!" On Sunday evening, June 28th, we reach 
Fond du Lac, clinging close to the water-line on her beauti- 
ful stretch of sand. All unregarded are the church-bells, 
and the Indians crowd to meet us, — bent old crones, strong 
men, and black-eyed babies. For is not the coming of the 
treaty party the one event of the Fond du Lac year? 

Half way along the traverse of the lake we had crossed 
the inter-Provincial boundary, and now find ourselves 
near the northern limit of the Province of Saskatchewan, 
and in the latitude of Sweden's Stockholm. There are but 
two people in Fond du Lac who speak English, — Mr. Har- 
ris who trades fur with the Indians, and Father Beihler 
who would fain shepherd their souls. 

These Caribou-Eater Indians are true nomads who come 
into the post only at treaty-payment time or to dispose 
of their hunt. In the inooii-zvhcii-thc-birds-cast-their- 
f cat hers (July) they will press back east and north to 
the land of the caribou. September, the-moon-when-the- 
moose-loose-tJieir-horns, will find them camping on the 
shore of some far unnamed lake, and by the time of the 
hoar-frost-moon, or the ice-moon, they will be laying lines 
of traps. 

We have learned to estimate the prosperity or otherwise 
of the Indians by the condition of their dogs. Fond du 

120 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

Lac dogs are fat ; each baby in its moss-bag exudes oil 
from every pore. Peace and Plenty have crowned the 
Caribou-Eaters during the winter that is past. The law 
of Saskatchewan permits the taking of the beaver. Alberta 
for the present has enacted restrictive legislation on this 







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Tepee of a Caribou-Eater Indian 

hunt, to which restriction, by the way, among the Indians 
at the treaty-tent at Chipewyan, objection had been loud 
and eloquent. 

We call upon Mr. Harris and his Chipewyan wife, a 
tall handsome woman whom he addresses as "Josette." 
Their three girls are being educated in the convent at Fort 
Chipewyan. The room in which we sit reflects the graft- 
ing of red life on white. A rough bookcase of birchwood, 

10 121 



THE NEW NORTH 

with thumbed copies of schoolboy classics, Carlyle, the 
Areopagitica, and the latest Tractate on Radium, gives 
one a glimpse of the long, long winter nights when all 
race and latitude limitations fade away and the mind of 
the Master of Fond du Lac jumps the barrier of ice and 
snow to mix with the great world of thought outside. 
"Stone walls do not a prison make nor iron bars a cage." 
Fighting our way with the mosquitoes, under birches 
somewhat dwarfed but beautiful, through a pungent 
bocage of ground pine, wild roses, giant willow-herb, mints 
innumerable and Labrador tea (Ledum latifolium), we 
reach the FI. B. garden where the potatoes are six or eight 
inches high. We wander into a little graveyard, surely 
the most lonely God's acre in all Canada. The inscrip- 
tions in syllabic Chipewyan show the patient devotion of 
Father Beihler, who comes across us as we gaze at the 
graves. Eight long years the priest has put in at Fond 
du Lac, sent here when but three months in the priesthood. 
His English, acquired from Mr. Harris, is a bit hesitating. 
Flis home was in Alsace-Lorraine; he tells us his mother 
was out of her mind for three days when he was ordered 
here, and he himself wept. White women are a vara avis. 
Father Beihler wants to know how old we are and if we 
are Catholics and how much money we earn. Pointing 
wisely to the Kid, he assures me, "They are not an-gell 
(angel) at that age," and says, "I am not a woman-hater', 
and I am not a woman clicrcJicr." The priest is as great 
a curiosity to us as we are to him, and each is interested in 
studying a new kind of animal. One sympathy we have 
in common, — the good Father knows every bird that flies 
over Fond du Lac. Who can tell what they whisper to 

122 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

him of the sweet Alsace so far away? We are treated to 
peeps into the nests of the orange-crowned warbler, the 
hermit thrush, and that shy wader, the spotted sandpiper. 
These ultimate woods fascinate us, with their worn 
north trails of the trapper beaten as hard as asphalt with 
the moccasins of generations. The father of the Chipew- 
yan down at the tents receiving his treaty money to-day 




A Bit of Fond du Lac 

and his grandfather before him trod these same trails and 
served The Company. Dusky feet trod these paths when 
good Queen Anne ruled in England, men made toilsome 
portages up these waterways, and here Crowfoot and 
Running Rabbit and Gaston Lamousette kept undisturbed 
the tenour of their way and matched wits with Carcajou the 
wolverine. 

To the student who would read at first hand the story 
of fur, more interesting than dark otters, Hudson Bay 
sables, or silver-fox, one form silhouettes on the white 

123 



THE NEW NORTH 

canvas of the North. It is the figure of the Trapper. 
Here, as elsewhere, the man who mixes brains with his 
bait and makes a scientific art of a rude craft is the man 
who succeeds. It is a contest of wit worthy the cleverest. 
The animals, as the years pass, become more rather than 
less wary, and the days of the magenta string tying a 
chunk of fat to a nice new shiny trap are long past. The 
man who used to "make fur" in that way is, like Fenimore 
Cooper's Indians, the extinct product of a past race that 
never existed. 

The Chipewyan trapper eats at once, or dries for the 
future, every ounce of flesh he traps, from the scant flesh- 
covering over the animal's skull to the feet and the entrails. 
As soon as the skins of beaver and musquash are removed, 
the bodies, so many skinned cats, are impaled on sticks 
of jack-pine and set sizzling before the fire. In the woods 
as in the camp, the laborious work falls to the woman. 
Lordly man kills the animal and that is all. With her 
babies on her back or toddling by her side, the wife trails 
the game home on hand-sled, and afterwards in camp she 
must dress the meat and preserve the skin. 

The band of Fond du Lac Indians is the largest in the 
whole North, and they are perhaps the least unspoiled of 
"civilisation," as their range is removed from the north- 
and-south route afforded by the Mackenzie. To-morrow 
the treaty party will leave, the skin tepees will be pulled 
down, and in those beautiful birchbark canoes whole fam- 
ilies will be on the move. These people are essentially 
meat-eaters. Their hearts have not learned to hunger for 
those soggy bannocks, unventilated shacks, and sheet-iron 
stoves which are luring their tribal cousins on the germ- 

124 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

strewn way to higher culture with convenient stopping- 
places in the graves by the wayside: 

Starting from Fond du Lac in July, a Chipewyan family 
sets out in two canoes, the big communal one, and the little 
hunting-canoe, the dogs following along shore. It is pad- 
dle and portage for days and weary weeks, inland and ever 




Birch-barks at Fond du Lac 

inland. In October the frost crisps into silence the run- 
ning water and the lake lip. Snow begins to fall, and the 
grind of forming ice warns the Chipewyan it is time to 
change birchbark for moccasin and snow-shoe. Canoes are 
cached, and the trail strikes into the banksian pine and 
birchwood. The door of the forest is lonely and eerie, 
It no longer seems incongruous that, although Big Par- 

i 2 5 



THE NEW NORTH 

tridge wears a scapular on his burnt-umber breast and 
carries with him on his journey the blessing of Father 
Beihler, he also murmurs the hunting incantation of the 
Chipewyans and hangs the finest furs of his traps flapping 
in the top of the jack-pine, a sop to the Cerberus of Mitchie 
Manitou, the feared Spirit of the Wood. 

Winter sees Indian families, each little group a vignette 
in the heart of the wider panorama, flitting over lake sur- 
faces to ancestral fur-preserves. In the early snow they 
pitch tepee, family fires are lighted, and from this centre 
the trapper radiates. The man sets his traps, and if the 
couple is childless his wife makes an 'independent line of 
snares. Each individual traps for miles and days alone, 
and an accident in the woods means a death as lonely and 
agonising as that of the animal he snares. With blanket, 
bait, and bacon on a small hand-sled, silently the trapper 
trudges forward. The Northern Lights come down o' 
nights, and it is cold; but cold makes finer fur. Down far 
trails in gloomy forests, across the breasts of silent streams, 
the Chipewyan trudges from trap to trap; if he finds fifty 
dollars worth of fur along the whole line he is content. 
It is not this lonely man who gets the high price, madame, 
for your marten stole or opera-cloak of ermine. 

On the trail the hunter may go hungry for two days and 
no word of complaint, just a tightening of the lips and 
L' Assumption belt, and a firm set to the jaw; but when a 
moose is killed life is one long supper. A jolly priest whis- 
pers of this confession from a son of the Church, a recent 
brand from the burning, "O Father, I know that Christian- 
ity is true, the great, the strong religion. When I was a 
heathen Chipewyan and trapped with my mother's tribe I 

126 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

ate ten rabbits a day. But now I am a Christian, a good 
Catholic, seven rabbits are enough for me — I will eat 
no more!" 

In the early days the H. B. Company allowed its men 
en voyage five pounds of meat a day, and each kiddie three 
pounds. In British Columbia and the Yukon the ration 
was one salmon ; up here on the Athabasca one wild goose 
or three big whitefish; on the Arctic foreshore two fish 
and three pounds of reindeer meat. This was the sched- 
uled fare, but the grimness of the joke appears in the fact 
that each man had to run his breakfast to earth before 
he ate it. 

Forty miles a day from trap to trap is a hard tramp on 
snowshoes when the wind sweeps down from the Arctic 
and the silence can be felt. The whole thing is a Louisi- 
ana lottery. The very next trap may hold a silver-fox 
that spells kudos for a year round the winter camp-fires 
and a trade valuation of one hundred dollars from the 
tempting stores of Mr. Harris. As long as the red fox 
brings forth her cubs to play in the starlight and marten 
and musquash increase after their kind, just so long will 
there be trappers and sons of trappers setting out from 
Fond du Lac. In October or November these Chipewyans 
will meet the migrating caribou on the northern side of 
Athabasca Lake. Caribou skins are in prime condition 
then to make coats and robes, and caribou venison, fresh 
or dried, is the daily bread which Providence sends to these 
far folk. About Christmas time, if they find themselves 
at a convenient distance from the post, the Indians come 
in to Fond du Lac to trade their furs with Mr. Harris and 
to get from Father Beihler the blessing of Mother Church. 

127 



THE NEW NORTH 

Out they go again and make their spring hunt of otter, 
bear, and beaver, whose skins they bring in when they 
come for their treaty money and annual reunion in July. 

Interesting indeed is the life-history of the Barren 
Ground caribou (rangifer articus), whose migrant hordes 
to-day rival in number the bands of the dead and gone buf- 
falo. Caribou go north in spring and south in autumn, 
as the birds do; and, unlike the seals, the female caribou 
form the advance line. They drop their young far out 
toward the seacoast in June, by which month the ground 
is showing up through melting snow. The male caribou 
never reach the coast, but join their wives and make the 
acquaintance of their babies at the end of July. From this 
time they stay together till the rutting season is over late 
in October. Then the great herds of caribou, — "la 
foule," — gather on the edge of the woods and start on 
their southern migrations toward the shelter and food 
afforded by the country of the larger pine trees. A month 
later the females and males separate, the cows with their 
intent fixed on the uttermost edge of things beginning to 
work their way north toward the end of February and 
reaching the edge of the woods by April. 

This is the general rule. Broadly speaking, the north 
shore of Athabasca Lake to-day forms the southern limit 
of the caribou range, while the Mackenzie River makes a 
natural dividing-line between eastward and westward 
branches of the caribou family. But the trend of this 
mighty migration will not be pent between mathematical 
lines of limitation, and the direction of prevailing winds 
may turn the numberless hosts and divert them from their 
line of march. Individuals and scattered bands, indeed, 

128 






LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

have been known not to migrate at all. Fifteen years ago 
in the last days of July, in latitude 62 ° 15' North, the 
Tyrrell Brothers saw a herd of caribou which they estimate 
contained over one hundred thousand individuals. In 1877 
a line of caribou crossed Great Slave Lake near Fort Rae 
on the ice. It took them two weeks to pass that point, 
and, in the words of an eye-witness, "daylight could not 
be seen through the column." 

A priest, on the winter trail between Fond du Lac and 
Fort Chipewyan a few winters ago, was travelling with- 
out fire-arms and, as his trail crossed that of the moving 
caribou, he had to delay his journey till they deigned to 
give him the right of way. It was impossible to pass 
through their ranks, and he hadn't even the satisfaction 
of making a fat bull pay tribute to his Mother Hubbard 
cupboard. 

Mr. Hislop, a fur-trader of Great Slave Lake, said to 
the writer, "At Fort Rae the caribou are and always have 
been very plentiful, I don't think they will ever die out." 
Rae was the old meat-station for the Far North, and the 
records show that after supplying local needs three thou- 
sand tongues were often exported in one season. If one 
intercepts a caribou-band in a little lake he may with 
patience kill them all without any trouble, as they run round 
and round on the ice, mystified by the wood-echoes and the 
reverberation of the shots. 

When the Chipewyan filters into southern latitudes and 
weakens with pink teas the virility that should go with red 
blood, aping the elect he will cast round for a suitable 
coat-of-arms. The proper caper for him would be the 
caribou rampant with a whitefish flotsam. The whitefish 

129 



THE NEW NORTH 

(coregonus clupeiformis) is gregarious, reaching shallow 
water to spawn. Wherever you see Indian tepee-poles by 
the side of Northern waters you may guess that to be a 
good fishing spot. The poles are always hospitably left 
for the next comer, the Indian merely carrying with him 
the skin or canvas cover of his tepee. The location of the 
Hudson's Bay forts was in the beginning determined by 
the good fishing-grounds, although now there is but indif- 
ferent fishing near some of the posts. It would almost 
seem that the whitefish have in their chilly veins as variable 
blood as any vagrant horde of caribou. The whitefish 
contains all elements necessary for human nourishment, 
and it is a happy fact that it does, for men and dogs in the 
North often live for solid months on nothing else. It is 
a rich fat fish and the usual mode of cooking it is by boiling. 
Northern people tell you that it is the only fish whose taste 
will never produce satiety, as it becomes daily more agree- 
able to the palate. I can't say that it worked on our 
sensibilities in just that way. But it is the old story of 
de gustibus, etc. We see the Fond du Lac people this 
evening roasting upon the coals, as choice tit-bits, the stom- 
achs of the whitefish. Scraping the dirt and ashes from 
the blackened morsel, they ofTer it to us as one would pass 
the olives in those lands so far below us where people wear 
dress-suits and railroads run. It is all a matter of lati- 
tude, after all, for when a bottle of olives was salved from 
the wrecked scow we had overheard this dialogue between 
two boatmen, as surreptitiously they broached cargo. "Do 
you like these?" "Yes." "You're a liar !" On the Atha- 
basca trail, too, we had seen an untried soul struggling 
with his first olive. It was Shorty, the lightning-stricken 

130 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

heir of the house of Kennedy. He coveted one of the 
"plums" from our lunch-basket, and was much surprised 
when we suggested that it was an olive. "What are 
them?" "Olives," we elucidated; "they come from South- 
ern Europe by steamer." "Do they?" (slightingly). 
"The one I et must have come steerage." 

We are to make the acquaintance of other Northern deli- 
cacies, — beaver-tails, moose-nose, rabbits' kidneys, caribou- 
tongues, and the liver of the loche, an ugly-looking fish 
of these waters. But the whitefish remains the staple; 
the fish-harvest here is as important a season as Harvest 
Home elsewhere. At the fishery, whitefish are hung upon 
sticks across a permanent staging to dry and freeze; an 
inch-thick stick is pierced through the tail, and the fish 
hang head downwards in groups of ten. This process 
makes the flesh firmer if the days continue cool, but if the 
weather turns mild as the fish are hanging they acquire 
both a flavour and a smell exceedingly gamy. This is the 
"Fall Fishery." Winter fishing is done through holes in 
the ice, the net being spread by means of a long thin pole. 
The handling of net and fish is terrible work in the bitter 
cold. 

As a whole, Canadian Indians are more independent than 
those of the United States, and certainly they have been 
more fairly dealt with in Canada than in the sister Repub- 
lic. There is in the Dominion to-day an Indian population 
of 110,000. The amount expended last year by Canada 
from the Consolidated Revenue Fund for her Indian De- 
partment was $1,358,254. The Canadian Government has 
sedulously kept faith with its Indians and has refrained 
from pauperizing them by pap-feeding or ration-folly ; very 

1 3 I 



THE NEW NORTH 

largely to-day the Canadian Indian plays the game off his 
own bat. 

Into the sturdy and intelligent faces of the Fond du Lac 
Indian we look, seeking in vain any trace of "the wild 
Red Man." The raison d'etre of these annual "treaty- 
payment parties" is merely the acknowledgment on one 
side and the recognition on the other that the Northern 
Indian is a British subject protected by and amenable to 
British law. In addition to the present of five dollars per 
head each year, the Canadian Government sends in by the 
Indian Agent presents of fishing twine and ammunition, 
with eleemosynary bacon for the indigent and old. The 
chiefs strut around in official coats enriched with yellow 
braid, wearing medals as big as dinner-plates. 

From Edmonton northward to Fort Chipewyan the In- 
dians are all Crees. At Fort Chipewyan the northern limit 
of the Crees impinges on the southern limit of the Chipew- 
yan, but here at Fond du Lac the Indians are all true 
Chipewyans. The Chipewyan wife is the New Red 
Woman. We see in her the essential head of the house- 
hold. No fur is sold to the trader, no yard or pound of 
goods bought, without her expressed consent. Indeed, the 
traders refuse to make a bargain of any kind with a Chip- 
ewyan man without the active approbation of the wife. 
When a Chipewyan family moves camp, it is Mrs. Chipew- 
yan who directs the line of march. How did she happen 
to break away from the bonds that limit and restrain most 
Red brides? This is the question that has troubled eth- 
nologists since the North was first invaded by the scientific. 
We think we have found the answer. Along the shores 
of Fond du Lac we descry a long-legged wader, the phal- 

132 



LAKE ATHABASCA AND ITS FOND DU LAC 

arope. This is the militant suffragette of all bird-dom. 
Madame Phalarope lays her own eggs (this depository act 
could scarcely be done by proxy), but in this culminates 
and terminates all her responsibilities connubial and ma- 
ternal, — "this, no more." Father Phalarope builds the 
house, the one hen-pecked husband of all feathered families 
who does. He alone incubates the eggs, and when the 
little Phalaropes are ushered into the vale, it is Papa who 
tucks their bibs under their chins and teaches them to peep 
their morning grace and to eat nicely. Mamma, mean- 
while, contrary to all laws of the game, wears the brilliant 
plumage. When evening shadows fall where rolls the 
Athabasca, she struts long-leggedly with other female 
phalaropes, and together they discuss the upward strug- 
gles toward freedom of their unfeathered prototypes. 



CHAPTER VIII 

FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

"( )n we tramped exultantly, and no man was our master, 

And no man guessed what dreams were ours, as swinging heel 
and toe. 
We tramped the road to Anywhere, the magic road to anywhere, 
The tragic road to Anywhere but one dear year ago." 

— Service. 

Everybody is to say farewell to Fond du Lac to-day, June 
29th, so there is a hurried finishing up of loose ends. A 



fth 







'.-~ 



^fi-f? 



ei_ s 



Fond du Lac 



loud yowl as of a lost soul letting go of life starts the 
lake echoes! No hand is staining itself in brother's blood. 
The treaty doctor, who visits these people, to use their 

134 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

own word, "as a bird on the wing," has just succeeded in 
extracting a tooth for a Chipewyan bride, Misere Bonnet 
Rouge. Misere looks ashamed of her howl when the ope- 
ration is over, and lisping, "Merci very," bears off in ex- 
pansive triumph the detached molar. 

Down at the lake edge, belly prone, men and women lap 
the water as dogs do, while the festive small boy from the 
Government bags of poor-house bacon is slyly licking the 
oozing fat. Of the taste of red-cheeked apples and chew- 
ing-gum he is guiltless ; popcorn, bananas, and the succu- 
lent peanut are alike alien. This pee-mee or oil of bacon 
is delicious morsel enough for his red palate. We trade 
a brier pipe with young McDonald, a full-blood, for his 
beautiful hat-band of porcupine quills, and in the French 
of the North he confides to us, "I have two boys. The 
mother can have the younger one to help her in the house, 
and the priest can teach him to be a white man if he likes ; 
but the other one goes with me, no school for him. I will 
make him a hunter like myself." Last year McDonald 
went into the woods on New Year's Day and didn't return 
until June, when he came back with three hundred caribou. 

Father Beihler is carrying a cup of water up to a tepee 
where an old Indian lies dying, to whom he is giving 
extreme unction. The slanting sun strikes the tin cup 
and the big crucifix of the good Father, and so we leave 
Fond du Lac. 

It is a beautiful shore, but lonely even now in the efful- 
gence of the midsummer sun; what it is like in winter we 
scarcely care to conjecture. A half-breed at our elbow 
tells how last year a small boy came out here on the ice 
playing with his sled. He slipped and fell, and the hungry 

135 



THE NEW NORTH 

dogs from the shore, seeing the fur-clad figure squirming 
on the ice, took it for some stranded animal and full- 
mouthed were down on him. The little chap was killed 




Father Beihler Carrying Water to a Dying Indian 

and partly devoured before any one had missed him from 
the camps. 

The man who tells the story crosses himself piously and 

136 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

immediately begins a bit of rag-time of the vintage of '08. 
We ask him where he heard the tune. "O, I catch him 
from the phunny-graph, me at the Mission." Canned cul- 
ture even here ! It is light enough to read on the deck at 
quarter past eleven. We chunk along through a lake of 
amethyst and opal, the marvellous midnight light keeping 
us from sleep. On the scow astern, sprawled on the sea- 
son's output of fur, the men smoke and argue. In the 
North, men talk of feats of strength and endurance, boast 
about their dogs, and discuss food. Two kindred souls 
may hark back to boyhood days and quote a page of Virgil 
or demonstrate on a bit of birchbark the forty-seventh 
proposition of Euclid, but you overheard no discussion of 
elections or ward-politics, no chatter of the marketplace. 
That is all "long ago and far away." To-night it is "You 
know there are fellows in here who can run like hell. The 
world's record is beaten every winter." r 'The world's 
record in lying, do you mean?" "No, running — a man 
can run one hundred miles a day in this country." "Well, 
what makes a day?" 'Twelve hours, — that is what I 
learned at school." "No: there's twenty-four hours in a 
day." "Well, a day, / take it, is as far as you can go 
without stoppin' — it never gets dark, so how is a man to 
know what's a day?" 

We reach Chipewyan Wednesday, July 1st, and there 
is no soul who cares a whitefish for the fact that this is 
Dominion Day, Canada's national holiday. For our din- 
ner Mrs. Johnson gives us home-grown parsley, radishes, 
lettuce, and green onions; the potatoes are eight or ten 
inches high, and rhubarb stalks an inch and a half in diam- 
eter. Wild gooseberries are big enough to make delec- 



11 



137 



THE NEW NORTH 

table "gooseberry fool." Who hungers for whitefish-stom- 
achs or liver of the loche? 

Early in the morning we start north in the Primrose, 
cross Athabasca Lake, and enter the Rocher River. Thirty 
miles from Fort Chipewyan the Rocher, uniting with the 
main channel of the Peace, makes a resultant stream known 
as the Slave, down which we pass in an incomparable 







Smith's Landing 



summer day, our hearts dancing within us for the clear 
joy of living. Poplars and willows alternate with white 
spruce (Picea canadensis) fully one hundred and fifty feet 
high and three feet in diameter. It is an ideal run, — this 
hundred miles between Fort Chipewyan and Smith's Land- 
ing, and we make it in twelve hours. 

"How did Smith's Landing get its name?" I ask the 

138 * 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

Primrose Captain. "Some ould fish o' the Hudson's Bay," 
from the tightly-bitten black pipe leaves one wondering if 
Lord Strathcona (Sir Donald Smith) was meant. At 
Smith's Landing we encounter the only obstacle to steam- 
boat navigation in the magnificent stretch of sixteen hun- 
dred miles between Fort McMurray and the Arctic Ocean. 
Between Smith's Landing and Fort Smith the Slave River 
presents sixteen miles of churning rapids with a total drop 
of two hundred and forty feet. Until within a few years 
every ounce of freight for the lower Mackenzie River posts 
had to negotiate this turbulent waterway, making seven 
portages and many decharges. The "free trader" still 
takes his scows down this Rapid of the Damned, but the 
H. B. Company (thanks be!) has provided a cross-country 
portage. 

We land on the heels of a tragedy. Some days before, 
in this surging swirl of waters two priests pushed out in a 
canoe. The older man had been in the North for years and 
was "going out," the other had come from Europe to take 
his place; the Father would show to his successor all the 
beauties of the rapids. In their enthusiasm they ventured 
too near the "Rapid of the Drowned," and canoe and men 
went down. An old Indian woman, the only eye-witness, 
said to me, "One arm lifted out of the river, the paddle 
pointing to the sky — a cry came over the water, and that 
was all." Our thought jumps to that peasant's home 
in far France where the mother waits and wearies for news 
from America. We see the unsteady fingers tearing open 
the first letter that comes out of that remote land where 
devotion and duty had called her son. We wonder who 
wrote that letter to her, and, turning away, wonder too at 

139 



THE NEW NORTH 

the destiny which suddenly breaks off the thread of lives 
like these and leaves dotards dozing in the sun. 

At Smith's Landing we join our Athabasca friends and 
meet new ones, among the latter Mr. Max Hamilton, who 
will tell you more of the North and its little ways in a 
forenoon than you could glean from books in a winter's 
study. Corporal Mellor and Constables Johnson and 
Bates, R. N. W. M. P., no longer gay birds of travel, have 
gotten down to brass tacks. With gay visions of striding 
blooded mounts, herding bison, and making history, they 
find themselves employed at present in making a barracks, 
making it out of logs and sweat with the lonely ox as 
coadjutor. Johnson, who has broken horses in the ring 
at Regina, is head of a wagon transport and tries to get 
speed and form from Wall-Eye Buck, an ox that came in 
with the Klondike rush and hasn't rushed since. Johnson 
holds the ribbons well and bows acknowledgment when 
we find a prototype for him in Mulvaney, the tamer of 
elephants. He can afford to take our banter good natur- 
edly, for he knows what lies before us on the Mosquito 
Portage and we do not. 

We thought we had met mosquitoes on the Athabasca. 
The Athabasca mosquito is gentle, ineffective, compared 
with his cousin of Smith's Portage. Dr. Sussex sits on 
the wagon-seat behind and explains the mosquito. He 
tells us that they are "of the order Diptcra," "sub-order 
Nemocera," and chiefly "of the family Ciilicidcc," and he 
also goes so far as to tell us that they "annoy man." As 
we bump along in the muskeg and the creatures surround 
us in a smother, he ventures to assert that "the life of the 
adult insect is very short" and that it is the female who 

140 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

stings. The Doctor is a born instructor. We learn that 
"the natural food of the mosquito is a drop or two of the 
juice of a plant." We suspect the Doctor of fagging up 
on "Mosquito" out of some convent dictionary while we 
have been at Fond du Lac. He is like the parson intro- 
duced by his friend of the cloth. "Brother Jones will now 
give an address on Satan. I bespeak for him your cour- 
teous attention, as the reverend gentleman has been pre- 
paring this address for weeks, and comes to you full of his 
subject." 

The adult mosquito may have a short life, but it is a 
life crammed full of interest; if the natural food of the 
mosquito is the sweet juice of a pretty flower then a lot 
of them in this latitude are imperilling their digestion on 
an unnatural commissariat. And if the female mosquitoes 
do all the fine work, there is a great scarcity of male mos- 
quitoes on Smith's portage, and once more in the North 
the suffragette comes into her own. We fear that these 
mosquitoes are like the Indians of whom a Slave River 
priest had said to us, "These have not delicate sensibil- 
ities such as gratitude and affection, but they have a proper 
appreciation of material things." 

Opposition is the life of trade. For every vantage-point 
as big as a match-head on our face and hands the "bull- 
dog" contests with the mosquito. An interesting study 
is the "bull-dog." He looks like a cross between a blue- 
bottle fly and a bumble bee, and we took leisure as we 
went along to examine the different parts of his person 
under a microscope that some one carried as a watch- 
charm. The head of the insect (if he is an insect) looks 
exactly like that of a T)ull-dog, he makes his perforation 

141 



THE NEW NORTH 

with a five-bladed lancet, and he is good workman enough 
to keep his tools always well sharpened. The Doctor was 
not "long" on the "bull-dog." He told us that his Sunday 
name was "Tabanus," and that was about all he could 
impart. The rest we could learn for ourselves by direct 
contact. 

Personally I have very little rancour against the "bull- 
dog." He looks worse than he is, and an adversary armed 
with hands can easily repel him. Four-legged brutes find 
it different. On the Bloody Portage we overtook five 
teams of oxen which had been more than twelve hours 
trying to make sixteen miles and were bleeding profusely 
from the fly-bites. Finally two of them succumbed and 
a relief team had to be sent out from Fort Smith. Moose 
in the North, maddened by the "bull-dogs," often jump over 
precipices and river-banks, as the Scriptural swine did 
when they were possessed of devils. 

Johnny-Come-Lately from dear old Lunnon reading in 
a Western paper, "The deer are chased into the water by 
the bull-dogs," ruminates audibly, "Chase the de-ah into 
the wa-tah with bull-dogs! How interesting! Jolly re- 
sourceful beggars, these Colonials." A literary scientist 
sending out copy from the North wrote, "My two greatest 
troubles are mosquitoes and bull-dogs," which the intel- 
ligent proof-reader amended into, "My two greatest trou- 
bles are mosquitoes and bull-frogs." 

Bringing in our daily treasure-trove of flowers we can 
scarcely realise that at Fort Smith we are in lati- 
tude 6o° North, the northern boundary of the Province 
of Alberta and in the same latitude as St. Petersburg. 
One day we gathered careopsis, pretty painted-cups, the 

142 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

dandelion in seed, shinleaf (Pyrola elliptic a) , our old friend 
yarrow, and golden-rod. Another day brought to the 
blotting-pads great bunches of goldenrod, a pink anemone, 
harebells of a more delicate blue than we had ever seen 
before, the flower of the wolf -berry, fireweed, and ladies '- 
tresses. The third day we identified the bear-berry or kin- 
nikinic-tobacco (Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) with its astrin- 







A Transport between Fort Smith and Smith's Landing 

gent leaves, and that dear friend of lower latitudes and far- 
away days, the pink lady-slipper. The last time we had 
seen it was in a school-room in far-off Vancouver Island 
where in early April the children had brought it in, droop- 
ing in their hot little fists. This same evening, watching 
a night-hawk careering in mid-air by the rapids of the 
Slave and enjoying its easy grace in twisting and doubling 
as with hoarse cry it fell and rose again, we were fortunate 
in literally running to ground its nest. 

143 



THE NEW NORTH 

Fort Smith, as places go in this country, is an infant in 
age, having been established only thirty-four years. Rest- 
ing on the edge of the high bank of the Slave, it enjoys 




Lord Strathcona, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company 

an eternal outlook on those wonderful rapids. The river 
here is a mile wide. The sweep and eddy-wash of ages 
have cut out a deep bay, on the inner shore of which stand 
the buildings of The Company, the little Roman Church, 
the houses of the priests. Back of the permanent struc- 

144 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

tures rise, this glorious July day, the tepees of the Chipew- 
yans, Slavis, and Dog-Ribs who have come in from the 
hunting-grounds for their treaty money. Fort Smith 
struck us as being more "dead" than any northern post. 
But it is on the verge of great things. Mr. Brabant has 
announced that this place is to succeed Fort Simpson as 
headquarters for the Northern fur-trade, and his person- 
ality will soon send unction into the dry bones of the valley. 

At the foot of the high hill looms a monument to the 
initiative and commercial enterprise of the H. B. Com- 
pany, — a modern steamship in the waters of a wilderness- 
country. Ours is to be the honor of making in her the 
initial journey to the Mackenzie mouth. It is impossible 
coming from the South to navigate the Slave River rapids 
by steam. Any boat ambitious to ply on the waters lying 
northward between Fort Smith and the Arctic must be 
either taken in in sections or built on the ground. With 
enterprise and pluck, the Hudson's Bay Company has just 
completed the construction at Fort Smith of the steamship, 
The Mackenzie River. Its great boilers and engines made 
in far factories of the south came in over the Athabasca 
trail on sleighs in winter. Down that whole distance of 
ninety miles of Athabascan rapids they floated on scows 
as we floated, and while human ingenuity is bringing north 
the iron bowels, skilful hands out of native timber are 
framing the staunch body to receive them. 

The builders of the big boat have had disasters which 
would have daunted any but the dogged Company of Fur- 
Traders. Two land-slides threatened to slice off and carry 
into the river the partially-made boat, a fire burned up the 
blacksmith shop and with it all the imported doors, win- 

145 



THE NEW NORTH 

dow-sashes and interior finishings, so that she sails to- 
morrow with carpenters still at work. While the hull of 
this carefully modelled vessel is necessarily of light con- 
struction, with special steel to enable her to navigate safely 
the waters of the Mackenzie River, longitudinal strength 
has been adequately provided in the form of five lattice gir- 
ders and by numerous hog-posts and ties, and the diagonal 
bracing of the bulkheads will provide ample transverse 
strength. The bow also has been made especially strong 
to resist the impact of ice, snags, etc. The hull is one 
hundred and twenty-five feet in length, twenty-six feet 
broad at the water-line, and five and one-third feet deep to 
the structural deck. The strength and safety of the hull 
are increased by five water-tight compartments. Propul- 
sion is effected by a pair of modern stern paddle-wheel 
engines capable of being worked up to over two hundred 
and fifty horse power, giving her a speed of ten miles an 
hour. She has stateroom accommodation for twenty-two 
passengers, draws three and a half feet of water aft, and 
eats up half a cord of wood an hour. She will carry to 
the northern posts their trading-goods for the year. 

Within a day's ride of Fort Smith grazes a herd of four 
to five hundred wood bison, the last unconfined herd of 
buffalo in the world. Doubtless the wood buffalo were 
originally buffalo of the plains. Their wandering north- 
ward from the scoured and hunted prairies has not only 
saved them from extinction but has developed in them 
resistance and robust vitality. These bison appear darker 
and larger than their pictured cousins of the past. Prob- 
ably the inner hair of these is finer and of thicker texture, 
a difference which the change of habitat to more northern 

146 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

latitudes would easily account for. The bison have two 
enemies: the grey wolf and the Indian, one an enemy 
in esse, the other in posse. The Government of Canada 
has prohibited the killing of the buffalo, and my opinion 
is that this law, as all other Canadian laws, is obeyed in 
the North. I questioned every one I talked with who 
lives on the rim of the buffalo-habitat, and the concensus 
of testimony of priests, H. B. men, settlers, traders, and 
Mounted Police, is that the Indians do not molest these 
animals. The arch-enemy of the wood buffalo is the tim- 
ber wolf. 




The World's Last Buffalo 



Evidently the beautiful thick coat of the woodland bisons 
allows them to laugh at the mosquito, for we come upon 
them in an almost impenetrable mosquito-infested musKeg. 
An untoward frost is more to be feared by these great 
brutes than the attacks of any insect. Thirty-eight years 
ago a heavy rainfall in the winter soaked the snow and 
formed a subsequent ice-crust which prevented them from 
grazing, and as they do not browse on the branches of trees, 
the herd was almost exterminated. In the past, they have 
been abundant throughout sections of this North country. 
In the beginning of the last century, the upper Peace River 

147 



THE NEW NORTH 

and as far north as the Liard was stocked with them. As 
the Hudson's Bay Company never traded in these skins for 
export, the Indians hunted them for food only, Fort Chip- 
ewyan being regularly supplied by its fort hunters with 
buffalo for its winter use up to the year 1885. 

In sections of the wooded country of the north the bison 
in times past were as plentiful as on the southern plains. 
During Sir John Franklin's first journey, his people near 
where the Athabasca River enters the lake "observed the 
traces of herds of buffalo where they had crossed the river, 
the trees being trodden down and strewed as if by a whirl- 
wind." In 1 87 1, two travellers making a portage to Hay 
River near its entrance into Great Slave Lake saw countless 
numbers of buffalo skulls piled on the ground two or three 
feet deep. The terrible loss of life indicated by these bones 
they attributed to a fourteen-foot fall of snow which oc- 
curred in the winter of 1820 and enveloped the travelling 
animals. 

One cannot but be intensely interested in the preservation 
of this herd of wood bison making here their last stand. 
The Canadian Government has shown a splendid spirit in 
its attitude toward every phase of the buffalo question, as 
its purchase of the Pablo herd from Montana now en- 
sconced in the new Buffalo Park near Wainwright, in 
Alberta, as well as the measures for preserving these 
northern brands from the burning, conclusively prove. 

Upon my chatting with Chief Pierre Squirrel, and ad- 
miring largely his magenta mosquito-veil, the astute chap 
tells me that he himself, back of Fort Smith a few years 
ago, saw a full-grown buffalo pulled down and the flesh 
literally torn off it by woodland wolves, strong brutes, he 

148 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

assured me, which weighed from one hundred and fifty to 
two hundred pounds each. A wolf shot on the Mackenzie 
last year measured from snout to the root of the tail sixty- 
four inches. The Dominion bounty on the timber-wolf is 
twenty dollars, but this is not an off-set to the native's 
superstitious aversion to killing this animal; the Indian's 
belief is that such slaughter on his part queers his hunt 
for a whole season. He never goes out with malice afore- 
thought on a wolf-hunt, but if one of these animals crosses 
his track he may kill it, although always with inward 
foreboding. A man brought in a wolf to Fort Smith while 
we were there and throwing down his hunting gear said, 
"There, it had better all be destroyed, I will have no luck 
with it more." Shortly afterwards a fish-staging fell on 
his son, for which the dead wolf was held responsible. As 
the female wolf has from three to five young at a litter 
and as the mother buffalo gives birth to but one calf, Fate, 
in both birth-rate and death-rate, would seem to favour the 
smaller animal. It is up to the red-coated lads of the 
river-edge to appear in the drama as gods-from-the-ma- 
chine. While one's sympathy is with the shaggy bison 
host, still one cannot withhold admiration for the grit and 
tenacity of the wolf. Archbishop Tache tells of the per- 
severing fortitude of a big wolf caught years ago in a 
steel trap at Isle a la Crosse. Thirty days afterwards, 
near Green Lake, a hundred miles away, it was killed, 
with trap and wood block still fixed to a hind leg. The 
poor brute through the intense cold of a Northern winter 
had dragged this burden all those weary miles. 

With Fort Smith as a centre, there remains an unmarred 
fur-preserve and a race of hardy trappers. Is the fur- 

149 



THE NEW NORTH 



trade diminishing? Statistics are extremely difficult to 
get, dealers do not publish dividend-sheets, the stockhold- 
ers of the Mother-Lodge of the H. B. Company do not 
advertise. There is no import duty on raw skins into the 
United States, and so no means of keeping tally on the 
large shipments of fur which yearly find their way south 
from Canada. The statistics which are available overlap. 
Raw furs making out by Montreal to Europe come back, 
many of them, as manufactured imports into this continent 
by way of New York. Canada in 1904 sent to her Ameri- 
can cousins furs and skins and manufactures of the same 
to the value of $670,472. This year the export has been 
more than doubled; the exact figures are $1,531,912. In 
1908, Canada sent to France $110,184 worth of raw and 
manufactured fur, to Germany $23,173 worth, and to Bel- 
gium $19,090 worth. 

More money goes to the trapper to-day for such common 
skins as red-fox and skunk and muskrat than was ever paid 
to the fur-hunter for beaver, seal, and sea-otter in the old 
days. Six million dollars worth of raw furs are sold an- 
nually by auction in London, and Canada is the Mother 
Country's chief feeder. Included in these London sales 
are some hundred thousand martens, or Hudson Bay 
sables, and probably four times that number of mink. The 
imports of raw furs and exports of the manufactured arti- 
cle cross each other so perplexingly that to-day the wearer 
of fur clothing has no way of finding out in what part of 
the world her stole or cap or jacket had origin. On the 
feet of the sacrificed animal, by snowshoe of trapper and 
scow of the trader, it may have travelled half round the 
world before, in the shop-window, it tempted her taste and 

150 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

pocket-book. Furs will be always fashionable; the poet 
of old who declared, "I'll rob no ermyn of his dainty skin 
to make mine own grow proud," would find scanty follow- 
ing* among the women of fashion in this age. 

In some parts of the United States an ingenious by-in- 
dustry to the fur-trade has arisen, for the offered-bounty 
destructive animals are carefully reared in illicit kinder- 
gartens. As some states pay for the scalps of these ani- 
mal pests and other states for the tails, the undertaking- 
is interesting and profitable. The only gamble is in the 
nursery. When the gladsome breeder gets his wild-cat 
or coyote big enough to market, it is "heads I win, tails 
you lose." The United States, in twenty-five years, has 
paid two and a half millions in wild animal bounties. Cal- 
ifornia paid in a year and a half $190,000 on coyotes alone, 
and no breed of noxious animals is yet extinct. 

What is true of the undesirable animals fortunately is 
true also of the harmless fur-bearers. Several causes 
make against the extermination of these in Canada. The 
range is so wide that, harassed in one quarter, the animal 
may get his family around him and make tracks for safer 
pastures. Hunted in the winter only, he has a good six 
months of planning and putting into practice plans of 
preservation as against the six months of active warfare 
when the trapper's wits are pitted against his. The fickle- 
ness of Fashion's foibles, too, in his favour. In no line 
of personal adornment is there such changing fashion as 
in furs. A fur popular this season and last will next 
spring be unsaleable at half its original value, and some 
despised fur comes to the front. 

What causes the changed standard? Who shall say? 

J5 1 



THE NEW NORTH 

World's Fairs, in showing perfect specimens, popularise 
particular skins. Some princess of the blood or of bullion 
wears mink at a regal or republican function, and the trick 
is turned. The trade-ticker on mink runs skyward and a 
wireless thrill of warning should by poetic justice be im- 
pelled here to the shores of the Slave where Mr. and Mrs. 
Mink and all the little minxes love and hate and eat and 
sleep (with one eye open). During the last five years 
furs have been increasingly fashionable, and to this end 
no one cause has contributed so strongly as the automo- 
bile. The exhilarating motion makes necessary clothing 
of compact texture. This truth is self-evident and does 
not require the involved chain of reasoning by which a 
friend over our milkless teacups last night strove to prove 
that by all laws of the game the auto makes milk cheap. 

The burden of his demonstration is this. Autos have 
largely done away with the keeping of horses for pleas- 
ures. Horses and horse-stables inevitably breed flies. 
Flies in summer worry cows, and they, to escape the an- 
noyance, stand for hours in running streams and do not 
graze. For lack of food, the milk-supply yielded by the 
cow is scanty, and milk rises in price. The auto upsets 
all this, and, undeterred by the horse-bred fly, complacent 
cows crop grass and distend their udders with cheap and 
grateful milk. Now, the reasoning is plain and incon- 
trovertible at any one point, and yet urban milk grows 
dearer and Northern travellers drink boiled tea an natural. 
Cows are the eternal feminine and will not be explained by 
logic. 

But we are in the latitude of the fox and not the cow. 
Should the most valuable fox that runs be called a black- 

152 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

fox, or a silver-fox? What is the highest price ever paid 
for a fox-skin? Do not try to get to the bottom of these 
two innocent-looking demands. That way madness lies. 
"How old is Ann?" pales before this. Canadian foxes 
present themselves patriotically in red, white, and blue, and 
there are also black foxes and silver ones. The black-fox 
is only less elusive than the black tulip or the blue rose, 
and yet he inhabits the same section and cohabits often 
the same burrow with the red and the cross-fox. By the 
way, a cross-fox is not a hybrid; he bears the sign of the 
cross on his shoulders, and so his name. The red-fox of 
America is not dissimilar to the red-fox of Europe, and 
yet a red-fox in Canada may have a silver-fox for its 
mother and itself give birth to a silver-cub. At the Mis- 
sion at Isle a la Crosse in latitude 55 ° 30', about twenty 
years ago, an experiment was made in breeding black- 
foxes. The missionary-Burbanks got two black-fox pups, 
male and female, and mated these when they were mature. 
From them always came mixed litters of red-fox, cross- 
fox, and black and silver. It reminds one of the Black 
Prince of England, who was son of a King and father of 
a King, yet never was a King! 

We are told that Messrs. McDougall & Secord, of Ed- 
monton, enjoy the distinction of having received the high- 
est price for a silver-fox pelt ever paid on the London 
market, — $1700, that it was one of the most beautiful 
skins seen in the history of the trade, and that it went to the 
Paris Exposition. Official Russian records at St. Peters- 
burg state, "Of the American silver-fox (Canis vulpes ar- 
gent atus) black skins have a ready market at from $1500 to 
$4000. They are used for Court robes and by the nobles." 

12 153 



THE NEW NORTH 

And so the stories go on. A dealer in Calgary told us 
that last winter he had handled a silver-fox skin that subse- 
quently brought $1950 in the London market. One quotes 
these tales blithely and with pleased finality. Then arises 




Tracking a Scow across Mountain Portage 



from some unsuspected quarter the voice of one cavilling 
in the wilderness, who contradicts your every story and 
finds with keen discriminating sight, "Black's not so black 
nor white so very white." Mr. Thompson-Seton makes 

154 



FOND DU LAC TO FORT SMITH 

declaration, "The silver-fox is but a phase or freak of a 
common- fox, exactly as a black sheep is, but with a differ- 
ence — !" Yes, there's that fatal and fascinating" differ- 
ence. As we must have salmon-hatcheries, so Nature 
demands intelligent fox-farms, and beaver-farms, and 
skunk-farms. Forty acres under fur promises greater in- 
terest than even forty-bushel wheat, and, to the imagina- 
tive, the way opens up for the development of a new Cat-o- 
Dog or Dog-o-Cat, Goatee-rabbiticus or Rabbito-goat. 

I would not like to vouch for the story told on the mos- 
quito-portage by the half-breed driver, who declared that 
last year a red-fox on the Slave stole a decoy duck and 
hunted with it for three seasons at the river-lip, placing 
it among the sedges and pouncing on the lured game. He 
was a serious-minded saturnine Scots-Slavi and told the 
story without moving an eye-brow. 

At Fort Smith we enjoyed a close study of the American 
White Pelican (Pelecamis crythrorhynclws ) which in the 
Mountain Rapids of the Slave finds its farthest north nest- 
ing-place. It, too, has the saving grace of continuance 
exhibited by the grey wolf. Mackenzie, a century ago, 
came across the birds here, and they have persisted ever 
since, although in the direct line of the river-transit of the 
fur-traders. A wooded island in the swirl of the rapids is 
their wild breeding-place, and while we were there the 
young birds were very much in evidence. We found some- 
thing fascinating about this bird, so famed in song and 
story. The plumage is white, relieved with rose and yel- 
low. The pelican nests are slight depressions in the sand, 
some of them softened with an algoid matting. The eggs 
are white, rough-shelled, and equal-ended, with, so far as 

155 



V 
THE NEW NORTH 

we could see, only one to three in a nest. One by one the 
illusions of childhood vanish. Some wretched historian 
proves without shadow of doubt that Sir John Moore at 
Corunna met decent daylight sepulture and was not "da'rkly 
buried at dead of night, the sod with our bayonets turn- 
ing." There arises one Ferrero who demonstrates with 
conclusive exactness that Antony was attracted by Cleo- 
patra's money and his breast was not stirred by the divine 
passion. A French scientist robs Benjamin Franklin of 
the kudos of his lightning-rod. I myself on Vancouver 
Island have happened to be in at the death of two swans, 
and neither gurgled a musical note but yielded the ghost 
in dignified silence. And now candour compels me to 
report that the Slave River pelican feeds her nestlings on 
prosaic fish without the slightest attempt to "open to her 
young her tender breast." It is rank libel for Byron to 
state 

"Her beak unlocks her bosom's stream 
To still her famished nestling's scream." 

And, when Keats states so sententiously in Endymion, "We 
are nurtured like a pelican brood," he merely calls the 
world at large, fish-eaters. 



r _, 



CHAPTER IX 

SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

"Wild for the hunter's roving, and the use 
Of trappers in its dark and trackless vales, 
Wild with the trampling of the giant moose, 
And the weird magic of old Indian tales." 

— Archibald Lamp man. 

A double cabin is assigned us on The Mackenzie River 
and the nightmare that haunted us on the scows of wet 
negatives and spoiled films vanishes. On Tuesday, July 
7th, the new steamer takes the water. Although, as we 
have said, we are in the latitude of St. Petersburg, still 
twelve hundred miles in an almost due northwest direction 
stretches between us and that far point where the Mac- 
kenzie disembogues into the Polar Ocean. The Union 
Jack dips and all Fort Smith is on the bank to see us off. 
On the Fourth of July we had improvised a program of 
sports for the Dog-Rib and Slavi boys, introducing them 
to the fascinations of sack-races, hop-step-and-jump, and 
the three-legged race. The thing had taken so that the 
fathers came out and participated, and, surreptitiously be- 
hind the tepees, the mothers began to hop. Having no 
popcorn, fizz, or Coney-Island red-hots to distribute, we 
did the next best thing, — became barkers and gave the 
calls that go with festivities. So now, as the boat swings 
out from the soft bank, it is a gay company of urchins who 
wave their caps and yell, "R-r-r-red lemol-lade, everybody 
drinks it!" 

157 



THE NEW NORTH 

There is only one Fort Smith! Established for three 
decades, it has as yet seen no wells dug. The people still 
climb that steep bank, carrying in pendant buckets from 
wooden shoulder-yokes water for the daily drinking and 
ablutions. At four o'clock in the afternoon, should you 
visit Fort Smith forty years from now, you will see the 




The " Red Lemol-lade " Boys 



same daily procession of women and kiddies bearing buck- 
ets, — the Aquarius sign of the Fort Smith zodiac. A scof- 
fer at my elbow grins, "Why should they bother to dig 
wells ? It's cheaper to bring out Orkney-men in sail-boats 
from Scotland to tote their water up the banks." 

At noon we reach the Salt River, twenty-two miles up, 
which is one of the most marvellous salt deposits in the 

158 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

world. The Salt River winds in crescent curves through 
a valley wooded with aspen and spruce, and the Salt Plains 
six miles in extent stretch at the base of hills six or seven 
hundred feet high. The salt lies all over the ground in 
beautiful cubes, — pure crystal salt. It is anybody's salt 
plain; you can come here when you will and scoop up all 
you want. These plains have supplied the North country 
with salt since first white men penetrated the country. At 




Salt Beds 

the mouth of the Salt River are the shacks of the present 
representatives of the Beaulieus, — a family which has acted 
as guides for all the great men who ever trended north- 
ward. They have been interesting characters always, and 
as we look in upon them to-day neither Beaulieu nor salt 
has lost his savour. 

The Slave River from where it leaves Fort Smith to its 
embouchure in Great Slave Lake is about two hundred 
miles long, with an average width of half a mile, except 
where it expands in its course to enclose islands. The big 
boat behaves beautifully in the water, and on we slip with 
no excitement until about five o'clock, when a moose and 

159 



THE NEW NORTH 

her calf are espied, well out of range. Each in his narrow 
cell, we sleep the sleep of the just and wake to find our- 
selves tied to the bank. The captain fears a storm is 
brooding on Great Slave Lake; so, tethered at the marge 
of the reedy lagoon, we wait all the forenoon. A corner 
of Great Slave Lake has to be traversed in order to reach 
Fort Resolution. 

To Samuel Hearne, the Mungo Park of Canada, belongs 
the double honour of tracing the Coppermine River and dis- 
covering Great Slave Lake. Just one hundred and thirty- 
seven years ago on Christmas Eve, Hearne got his first 
glimpse of this magnificent inland sea which is cut through 
the centre by the parallel of 62 °, and which lies east and 
west between the meridians of 109 and 117 . No survey 
of Great Slave Lake has been made, but it is estimated to 
have a superficial area of 10,500 square miles — just one- 
third the size of troubled Ireland, and as great as Delaware, 
Connecticut, and Rhode Island combined. 

Great Slave Lake, lying wholly within the forested re- 
gion, is three hundred miles long, and its width at one point 
exceeds sixty miles. At every place on its banks where 
the fur-traders have their stations ordinary farm-crops 
are grown. Barley sown at Fort Resolution in mid-May 
reaches maturity in a hundred days ; potatoes planted at the 
same time are dug in mid-September. The gardens of 
Fort Rae on the North Arm of the Lake produce beets, 
peas, cabbages, onions, carrots, and turnips. As Fort Rae 
is built on a rocky island with a bleak exposure, this would 
seem to promise in some future day generous harvests for 
the more favoured lands on the south and west. 

The names given by the old fur-traders to their posts 

160 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

make the traveller think that in these North lands he, a sec- 
ond Christian, is essaying a new Pilgrim's Progress. At 
the south entry to the Lake we are at Resolution ; when we 
cross it we arrive at Providence; away off at the eastern 
extremity is Reliance; Confidence takes us to Great Bear 
Lake; and Good Hope stretches far ahead down the lower 
reaches of the Mackenzie. Fort Resolution on the south 



—r:»-wt£«» 







Unloading at Fort Resolution 

side of Great Slave Lake, a little west of the mouth of 
the Slave, lies back of an island-sheltered entrance. 

The striking feature as we enter is an immense Roman 
Catholic Mission school in process of construction, to sup- 
plement the existing church and school of that faith. 
There is neither station of the Mounted Police nor Church 
of England here ; their places are taken by two independent 
fur-trading concerns operating in opposition to the Ancient 
Company. 

161 



THE NEW NORTH 

We had been told that the children down North had the 
kiddies at Fort Smith and Chipewyan "all skinned" for 
politeness, and we find it even so. The good nuns are 
trying to make reputable citizens of the young scions of 
the Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife nations and are succeeding 
admirably as far as surface indications go. We ap- 
proach a group of smiling boys arrayed in their Sunday 
clothes, awaiting a visit of the Bishop. With one accord 
come off their Glengarry bonnets, smoking caps, and 
Christie stiffs, and a row of brown hands is extended to 
greet us. Very trim the laddies look in their convent- 
made cadet-uniforms, as, standing at "'Shun!" they an- 
swered our every question with, "Yes, missus," "No, 
missus." When we ask their names, without tittering or 
looking silly they render up the whole list of saintly cog- 
nomens. Here they have once more their white brothers 
"skinned" ; no civilised man, woman, or child ever stood up 
in public and announced his full baptismal name in an 
audible tone without feeling a fool. I have seen grizzled 
judges from the bench, when called upon to give evidence 
as witnesses, squirm like schoolboys in acknowledging that 
their godfathers had dubbed them "Archer Martin" or 
"Peter Secord" or whatever it might be. 

It is certainly Old Worldish. We speak with Father 
Laity who, all unconscious of the commotion around him, 
marches up and down the trail and reads his breviary. 
He tells us he is a Breton and that in an age that is past 
he served as a drummer-boy in the Prussian war. The 
Father came to this shut-in land forty-one years ago- 
Great Slave Lake, which presents a formidable barrier 
to the passage of the smaller land birds, is a breeding sta- 

162 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

tion of the sea-swallow. The Arctic tern hatches on its 
shores, laying its eggs in the beach gravel. The bird, with 
its slender body, deeply-forked tail, and shrilly-querulous 
voice, is everywhere in evidence. Does the whole family 
of lake birds show any more exquisite colour-scheme than 
the pearly plumage, small coral feet, carmine bill, and black 
cap of this tern? In a dell carpeted with silverweed and 
wild mustard, we come across a nest of our persisting 
friend, the chipping sparrow. Afterward we wander 
down to the shore and make the acquaintance of Pilot 
Julien Passepartout, whose calling as Mackenzie River 
navigator allows him to live out the largeness of his title, 
though I like best to think of him by the cradle-name his 
mother gave him, Tenny Gouley, which means "A man 
bom." 

Down at the Treaty tent, Dog-Rib and Yellow-Knife 
are being handed the five one dollar bills which remind each 
that he is a loyal subject of His Imperial Majesty Edward 
the Seventh. The Yellow-Knives were so named by Mac- 
kenzie far back in 1789 when he first saw them and their 
weapons of native copper. Each head of a family is issued 
an identification-ticket which he presents and has punched 
from year to year. A father "draws treaty" for his olive- 
skinned branches until each marries and erects a tepee for 
himself. Government Agent Conroy, big bodied and big 
hearted, sits on a nail-keg, represents the King, and gives 
out largesse; and Mr. Laird presides over the Doomsday 
book. Inside the tent we take up a sheltered position and 
watch the fun. There are marked zones of names as well 
as of vegetation. The Fiddler Anns, Waggon-box Julias, 
and Mrs. Tnrkeylegs of the Plains country are absent 

163 



THE NEW NORTH 

here, in the Land of the Yellow-Knife, where neither wag- 
gon-boxes nor turkeys flourish. 

Mary Catholic comes along hand-in-hand with Samuel 
the Worm. Full of animal spirits is a group of four — 
Antoine Gullsmouth, Tongue-of-the-JackUsh, Bapiiste 
Wolf tail, and The Cat's Son. A little chap who an- 
nounces himself as T'tum turns out to be Petite Homme, 




Coming to " Take Treaty " on Great Slave Lake 

the squat mate of The Beloved. It would be interesting to 
know just how each of the next couple acquired his name, 
for neither Trois-Pouces and Owl-Plucked-Out-His-Eye 
bears evidence of abnormal conditions. On a whole the 
names are more striking than our John Smiths, Richard 
Roes, and Tom Browns, as for instance the next three — 
Le Pcrc des Carriboux, Geroux the Eldest, Alixi To-rong- 

164 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

jo. The-man-who-stands-still is evidently a stand-patter, 
while one wonders if it would be right to call The-Man- 
Who-W alks-With-T he-Re d-H air , a Crimson Rambler. 

Carry-the-Kettlc appears with Star Blanket and The 
Mosquito, and the next man in line, who has the tongs 
from a bon-bon box stuck in the band of his hat, rejoices 
in the name of Strike-Him-on-thc-Back, which somehow 
suggests the match-box in the hotel hall- way. As the dig- 
nified father, Haz'ing-Passed-Many-Birthdays, claims five 
dollars each for his four daughters, Smiling Martin, My- 
Wigzvam-is-White, and the twins Make-Daylight-Appear 
and Red-Sky-of-the-Morning, we acknowledge that here 
again, in the art of naming, the Yellow-Knife has his 
white brother "skinned." 

Birth, dowry, divorce, death, each must be noted on the 
treaty ticket, with a corresponding adjustment of the num- 
ber of dollar-bills to be drawn from the coffer. If a man 
between treaty-paying and treaty-paying marries a widow 
with a family, he draws five dollars each for the new people 
he has annexed. If there is an exchange of wives (a not- 
infrequent thing), the babies have to be newly parcelled 
out. Through all the family intricacies Mr. Conroy fol- 
lows the interpreter with infinite patience and bonhomie. 
To the listener it sounds startling as the interpreter, pre- 
senting two tickets says, "He married these three people — 
this fellow." "O, he give dat baby away to Charles." 
When we hear in a dazed way that "Mary Catholic's son 
married his dead woman's sister who was the widow of 
Anton Lariiconi and the mother of two boys," we take a 
long breath and murmur, "If the angle A C B is not equal 
to the angle ABC, then how can the angle D E F be 

165 



THE NEW NORTH 

equal to the angle D F E?" A young couple, looking 
neither of them more than sixteen or seventeen, return 
with a shake of the head five of the fifteen dollars proffered 
them, and the interpreter explains, "Their little boy died 
— there's only two of them." 

Gregory Daniels in a Scottish voice, which cannot quite 
hide its triumphant ring, pushes back his five dollars and 
demands forty-five. "I got a wife and siven since last 
year, she's a (Tree wumman." Another half-breed asks 
anxiously if he would be allowed to send for a "permit" 
like a white man if he refused to take treaty. 

One man with long black hair and a cheese-cutter cap 
creates consternation at the tent-door by claiming treaty 
for two wives and seventeen children. Mr. Conroy, scent- 
ing an attempt to stuff the ballot-box, produces seventeen 
matches, lays them at my feet on the tent-floor and asks 
Thc-Lcan-Man to name them. He starts in all right. 
We hear, "Long Lodge, Little Pine, Bine Fish, Birdtail, 
Little Bone, Sweet Grass, Ermine Skin" and then in a 
monotone he begins over again, "Long Lodge, Little Pine, 
Blue Fish," and finally gives it up, eagerly asking the in- 
terpreter to wait "a-little-sun." The drama of paying and 
recording has gone on for half an hour and we have quite 
forgotten Thc-Lcan-Man, when back he comes with Mrs. 
Lean-Man, Sr., and Mrs. Lean-Man, Jr. Each spouse 
leads her own progeny. Seeing is believing, and off Lean- 
Man goes with a fat wallet. We wander into the stores 
to see what purchases the Indians will make. One young 
blade is looking at a box of stogies, and the clerk says, "He 
can afford to blow in his wad on perfumes and cigars, that 
chap, he got a silver-fox last winter." They tell the story 

1 66 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

of how old Maurice, Chief of the Chipewyans, put his first 
treaty money in a cassette and kept it there all the year be- 
cause he had heard one white man tell another that money 
grows, and he wanted to see if a white man lies when he 
talks to another white man. 

Sometimes, though, the Indian scores one on the white. 
This was markedly the case when the first treaty payments 
were made at Lesser Slave. Two young Jews had fol- 
lowed the treaty party all the way in from Edmonton with 
an Old Aunt Sally stand where you throw wooden balls 
at stuffed figures at ten shies for a quarter. "Every time 
you hit 'em, you get a see-gar !" They thought they were 
going to clear out the Indians, but it took a bunch of Lesser 
Slave braves just an hour and a quarter to break the bank 
at Monte Carlo. As an appreciative onlooker reported, 
"Them chaps pinked them dolls every time." 

As we leave Resolution in the evening through an open 
door, we get a glimpse of a woman placing her hands in 
blessing on a boy's head. It is the mother of one of our 
boatmen, Baptiste Bouvier, or "De-deed." The lad in 
turn puts a hand on each of his mother's shoulders and 
kisses her gaily on both cheeks, grabs the camera, and 
helps us down the bank. The whistle toots impatiently. 
We both turn and wave our hands to the mother at the 
open door. 

Travelling all night, we do not go to bed, but merely 
throw ourselves down for an hour's rest about midnight, 
for we must not lose the light effects on this great silent 
lake. As the captain finds, amid shifting sandbars, a fair- 
way for his vessel, there comes offshore the subdued night- 
noises of the small wild things that populate the wilder- 

167 



THE NEW NORTH 

ness. Here a heavy tree, its footway eaten out by the 
lake-swirl round a high point, slumps into the water, and 
joins the fleet of arboreal derelicts. The raucous voice of 
a night-fowl cries alarm. Then there descends over all a 




On the Slave 



measureless silence. At three o'clock in the morning we 
haul into the Hay River Mission, where the familiar mos- 
quito-smudge greets us at the landing. 

This was by far the most attractive English Church 

1 68 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

Mission in the whole North — although comparisons are 
odorous and yet illuminating. All Hay River had been up 
over night, anticipating their yearly mail. Red girls and 
boys of every tribe in the North are housed in this Mission, 
learning how to play the white man's game — jolly and 
clean little bodies they are. It looks like Christmas time. 
Parcels are being done up, there is much whispering and 
running to and fro, and the sparkling of black eyes. 
Would you like to see the letters that The Teaser, The 
Twin, Johnny Little Hunter, and Mary Blue Quill are 
sending out to their parents ? For the most part the mis- 
sives consist of cakes of pink scented soap tightly wrapped 
round with cotton cloth, on which the teachers are writing 
in ink the syllabic characters that stand for each father's 
and mother's name. The soap has been bought with the 
children's pennies earned by quill-work and wood-carving 
done in the long winter nights. The parcels will be passed 
from one trapper's jerkin to another, and when, months 
afterwards, they reach their destination in far tepee or 
lodge of the deerskin, Mrs. JVoman-of-the-Bright-Foam 
and Mr. Kee-noo-shay-o, or The Fish, will know their boys 
and girls "still remember." 

One of the Hay River teachers is married to a Chicagoan 
who started ten years ago for the Klondike, knew when he 
had found pure gold, ceased his quest here, and lived hap- 
pily ever after. Their children are the most fascinating 
little people we have seen for many months. Life is 
quaint at the Hay River Mission. The impression we 
carry away is of earnest and sweet-hearted women bring- 
ing mother-love to the waifs of the wilderness, letting their 
light shine where few there are to see it. We discover the 
13 169 



THE NEW NORTH 

moccasin-flower in bloom, see old Indian women bringing 
in evergreen boughs for their summer bedding — a delight- 
ful Ostermoor mattress of their own devising. Dogs cul- 
tivate potatoes at Hay River in summer, and in the winter 
they haul hay. The hay causes our enquiry, and we learn 
that this Mission boasts one old ox, deposited here no 
doubt by some glacial drift of the long ago. And thereby 
hangs a tale. Charlie, an attache of the school-force, 
drove this old ox afield day by day. As man and beast re- 
turned wearily in the evening, the teachers asked, "Well, 




Dogs Cultivating Potatoes 

what happened to-day, Charlie?" "Bill balked," was the 
laconic reply. Tuesday's question would bring the same 
response, "Bill balked." And "Bill balked," on Wednes- 
day. Thursday it is — "Bill didn't balk"; and so the days 
divided themselves into days of blueness and red-letter 
days. 

The mean July temperature at Hay River is 6o° Fahren- 
heit, and the monthly mean for January, i8° below zero. 
Vegetables of their own growing, with whitensh from the 
lake, furnish almost the entire food supply of this thrifty 
Mission, one season's harvest giving them a thousand 
bushels of potatoes, fifteen of turnips, and five each of 

170 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 

beets, carrots, and parsnips, with two hundred cabbages 
and over ten thousand whitefish. 

Hay River has never been explored. It is supposed to 
head near the source of the Nelson and to flow northeast 
for three hundred miles before emptying, as we see it, into 
Great Slave Lake. This river marks the limit of those 
grassy plains which extend at intervals all the way from 
Mexico northward. Bishop Bompas, years ago, descended 
a long stretch of the river, discovering not far back from 
where we stand a majestic cataract, which he named the 
"Alexandra Falls" after the then Princess of Wales. He 
describes it as a perpendicular fall one hundred feet high, 
five hundred feet wide, and of surpassing beauty. "The 
amber colour of the falling water gives the appearance of 
golden tresses twined with pearls." 

Crossing Great Slave Lake, we think of Chant-la, Chief 
of the Slavis at Hay River. Bishop Reeves was anxious 
to convert him to the Christian faith, but had great diffi- 
culty in giving Chant-la a proper conception of the Trin- 
ity. The old man would not say he believed or understood 
what was inexplicable to him. Setting out once on a long 
journey, the cleric adjured the Chief to struggle with the 
problem during his absence. The Bishop returning, 
Chant-la came out in his canoe to meet him, eagerly report- 
ing that all now was clear. "It is like Great Slave Lake," 
said the old man. "It is all water now, just like the 
Father. When winter comes it will be frozen over, but 
Great Slave Lake just the same; that is like the Son. In 
the spring when the ice breaks and the rain makes the 
snow into slush, it is still Great Slave Lake; and that is 
like the Holy Ghost." 

171 



THE NEW NORTH 

Beyond Great Slave Lake, forty-five miles down the 
Mackenzie, we reach Fort Providence, as strongly French 
in its atmosphere as Hay River is British. Our coming is 
a gala day. The hamlet flies three flags, the free trader 
sports his own initials "H. N.," the Hudson's Bay Com- 
pany loyally runs the Union Jack to the masthead, over the 
convent floats the tri-colour of France. Fort Providence 
is hot. We walk to the convent and are hospitably re- 
ceived by the nuns. They call their Red flock together for 
us to inspect and show us marvellous handwork of silk em- 
broidery on white deerskin. The daintiest of dainty slip- 
pers calls forth the question, "Where are you going to 
find the Cinderella for these?" A blank look is my an- 
swer, for no one in Providence Convent has ever heard 
of Cinderella! But then, convents are not supposed to 
be the repositories of man-knowledge (although a half- 
breed, on our passage across the lake, did whisper a ro- 
mantic story of a Klondiker who assailed this very fort- 
ress and tried to carry off the prettiest nun of the north). 
The garden of the Sisters is a bower of all the old-fash- 
ioned flowers — hollyhocks, wall-flower, Canterbury bells, 
and sweet-William — and down in the corner a young girl 
of the Dog-Ribs discovers to us a nest of fledgling chip- 
ping sparrows. 

As we landed from the boat, Tenny Gouley dressed in 
his Sunday best had beamed, "Nice day — go veesit." 
And "veesit" we did. Mrs. Herron, of the H. B. Com- 
pany, has spent many years at Old Fort Rae, and her 
thoughts hark back to one severe winter spent there. She 
turns to the wife of our good Captain with, "Hard living, 
Mrs. Mills, dry suckers." It is a short speech, but fraught 

172 



SLAVE RIVER AND GREAT SLAVE LAKE 



with meaning. I honestly think a dry sucker (well 
sanded) the least succulent of all the impossible fish- 
dishes of the North. There are many young Herrons all 
as neat as new pins, the last — no, the latest, enshrined in 
a moss-bag. Tradition tells that once, when they were 
fewer in number, the father took the flock out to Winnipeg 
to school. The children cried so at the parting that Mr. 




David Villeneuve 

Herron turned and brought them all back with him to the 
Mackenzie ! 

The most interesting man in all Fort Providence is 
David Villeneuve, one of the Company's Old Guard. He 
was anxious to be "tooken" with his wife and grandchild, 
and over the camera we chatted. David goes through 
life on one leg — fishes through the ice in winter, traps, 
mends nets, drives dogs, and does it all with the dexterity 

*73 



THE NEW NORTH 

and cheerfulness of a young- strong man. He tells of his 
accident. "I was young fellow, me, when a fish-stage fell 
on me. I didn't pay no notice to my leg until it began to 
go bad, den I take it to the English Church to Bishop Bom- 
pas. He tole me de leg must come off, an' ax me to get 
a letter from de priest (I'm Cat-o-lic, me) telling it was all 
right to cut him. I get de letter and bring my leg to 
Bompas. He cut 'im off wid meat-saw. No, I tak' 
not'in', me. I chew tobacco and tak' one big drink of 
Pain-killer. Yas, it hurt wen he strike de marrow." 
"Heavens! Didn't you faint with the awful pain?" 
"What? Faint, me? No. I say, 'Get me my fire-bag, 
I want to have a smokV " 



CHAPTER X 

PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES 
DOWN THE MACKENZIE 

"Never the Spirit was born: the Spirit shall cease to be never. 

Never was time, it was not ; end and beginning are dreams. 
Birthless and deathless and changeless remaineth the Spirit, 

Death hath not touched it at all, though dead the house of it 
seems." 

We have just finished supper and are sitting reading" on 
the upper deck about seven o'clock, when a cry comes from 
below, followed by the rushing back and forth of nioc- 
casined feet. In a flash Bunny Langford, one of the en- 
gineers, has grabbed a lifebuoy, runs past us to the stern, 
and throws it well out toward a floating figure. 

It is De-deed, De-deed who had smilingly helped us 
aboard at Resolution just twenty-four hours before. Fin- 
ishing his turn at stoking, he had gone to draw a bucket 
of water, leaned over too far, and fallen, carrying the hatch 
with him. At first we think nothing of the incident, as 
he is a good swimmer and the current is with him. As 
soon as the startled people realise what has happened 
the steamer's engines are reversed and a boat is lowered. 
We call out to De-deed to swim to the buoy, but he doesn't 
see it or doesn't understand. The black head gets smaller 
in the distance ; it disappears, and comes up again. Down 
it goes for the second time. A strange, constricted feeling 
comes into our throats as we cry out, "Swim, De-deed, the 

175 



THE NEW NORTH 

boat is coming ! They are almost up to you !" The boat, 
pulling hard against the current, seems but a dozen yards 
away. Will he hold up? As we look, the head sinks, and 
it does not conic up. Within a few feet of buoy and boat, 
the body of De-deed disappears for the last time. We 
search for an hour or more with grappling irons, but he is 
never seen again. A strange silence settles down above 
and below deck, and all night long two faces flit before 
us — the grave face of the mother calling down blessings 
on her boy, the rallying smile of De-deed bidding her good- 
by and telling her all is well. It is a brave and happy 
spirit which, in the "Little Lake" of the Mackenzie, goes 
out with the current. 

The Mackenzie River, "La Grande Riviere en Bas," 
as the people of Resolution call it, on whose waters we 
are now fairly embarked, is the greatest water-way in the 
British Empire, and of earth's great rivers the one least 
traversed by man. Counting back from the headwaters of 
either its more northerly tributary the Peace or its south- 
ern feeder the Athabasca, the length of the river is three 
thousand miles. At Little Lake, where it issues out of 
Great Slave Lake, the Mackenzie is eight miles wide, and 
its delta a thousand miles below here has an expansion of 
fifty miles. The average width of the stream, as we 
traverse it from source to mouth, is a mile and a half, 
widening out often in its sweep to two and a half to three 
miles. 

From Little Lake the current is somewhat sluggish, the 
river bank seldom exceeding one hundred feet in height 
until we reach what is known as "The Head of the Line." 
Before the advent of steam on the Mackenzie, when the 

i 7 6 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

patient voyager made his way up south from the ocean, it 
was at this point that the tracking-line was exchanged for 
oars. The plains bordering the river here are forested 
with white spruce and broken with muskeg and lakes. 
The statistician on board works out that the volume of 
water the Mackenzie carries to the sea is half a million 
feet a second. No one is wise enough to challenge his 
calculation, and we merely hazard a wonder if this most 
magnificent water-power will ever be used for commercial 
and economic purposes. There is surely enough "white 
coal" rushing by us to turn the wheels of the factories of a 
continent. The Mackenzie is the only river whose basin 
is cut by a thousand mile range. The sources of the 
Peace and the Liard lie on the west side of the Rockies, 
from where these giant feeders bring their tribute to the 
main river through passes in that range. 

At intervals all the way down the river to Fort Simp- 
son we are treated on our right hand to views of the Horn 
Mountains, which slope away on their north side but show 
a steep face to the south. Along our course the bluish 
Devonian shales are capped by yellow boulder-clay. 

We awaken on Friday, July ioth, to find ourselves at 
Rabbitskin River and everybody busy carrying on wood 
for fuel. By ten o'clock we are at Fort Simpson in lat- 
itude 62 , the old metropolis of the North. Fort Simpson 
is built on an island where the Liard River joins the Mac- 
kenzie, the river being a mile and a half wide at this point. 
The foundation of the fort dates back to the beginning of 
the nineteenth century, when it was known in fur annals 
as "The Forks of the Mackenzie." 

Simpson is essentially a has-been. We look upon the 

177 



i 



THE NEW NORTH 

warehouses of its quadrangle with their slanting walls and 
dipping moss-covered roofs and try to conjure up the 
time long past when all was smart and imposing. In 
those days when the Indians brought in their precious 
peltries they were received and sent out again with military 
precision and all that goes with red tape and gold braid. 
Surely the musty archives of Simpson hold stories well 



worth the reading! 



We would fain linger and dream in 




Hudson's Bay House, Fort Simpson 



front of this sun-dial across whose dulled face the suns 
of twenty lustrums have cast their shadows, but we be- 
grudge every moment not spent in fossicking round the 
old buildings. We seek for threads which shall unite this 
mid-summer day to all the days of glamour that are gone. 
In a rambling building, forming the back of a hollow 
square, we come across the mouldy remains of a once 
splendid museum of natural history, the life work of one 
Captain Bell of the Old Company. It gives us a sorry 

i 7 8 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

feeling to look at these specimens, now dropping their 
glass eyes and exposing their cotton-batting vitals to the 
careless on-looker, while the skeleton ribs of that canoe 
with which Dr. Richardson made history so long ago add 
their share to the general desolation. In a journal of the 
vintage of 1842 we read an appeal for natural history ex- 
hibits sent to Fort Simpson by an official of the British 
Museum. He writes, 

"I may observe that in addition to the specimens asked for, any 
mice, bats, shrew-mice, moles, lizards, snakes or other small quadru- 
peds or reptiles would be acceptable. They may either be skinned 
or placed in rum or strong spirits of any kind, a cut being first 
made in the side of the body to admit the spirits to the intestines." 

Of all the rare humour disclosed in the old records, this 
entry most tickles my fancy. 

I think of the little group that we had forgathered with 
at Chipewyan, driven even in this year of grace to laven- 
der-water and red ink, when permits run dry. One turns 
back the clock to the time of the Chartists and the year of 
the nuptials of the young Queen in England. We see up 
here on the fringe of things the dour and canny but ex- 
ceedingly humorous Adam McBeaths, John Lee Lewises, 
and George Simpsons, the outer vedette of the British 
Empire; and, seeing them, get some half-way adequate 
conception of what a modicum of rum or "strong spirits 
of any kind" meant in the way of cheer at old Fort Simp- 
son in those days. When we try to get a picture of one 
of these Hudson's Bay men gravely opening a shrew- 
mouse, mole, or "other small quadruped," while his chum 
pours in the aqua vitae or precious conversation water, 
we declare that science asks too much. 

179 



THE NEW NORTH 

An outer stairway leading to the second story of a 
big building invites us. Opening the door, we find our- 
selves in the midst of an old library, and moth and rust, 
too, here corrupt. We close the door softly behind us and 
try to realise what it meant to bring a library from Eng- 
land to Fort Simpson a generation ago. First, there 
arose the desire in the mind of some man for something 
beyond dried meat and bales of fur. He had to persuade 
the authorities in England to send out the books. 
Leather-covered books cost something six or seven decades 
ago, and the London shareholders liked better to get 
money than to spend it. We see the precious volumes 
finally coming across the Atlantic in wooden sailing-ships 
to Hudson Bay, follow them on the long portages, watch 
them shoot rapids and make journeys by winter dog-sled, 
to reach Simpson at last on the backs of men. The old 
journals reveal stories of the discussion evoked by the 
reading of these books afterward as, along with the dried 
fish, deer-meat, and other inter-fort courtesies, they passed 
from post to post. Was never a circulating library like 
this one. And now the old books, broken-backed and dis- 
embowelled, lie under foot, and none so poor to do them 
reverence. Everything is so old in this North that there 
is no veneration for old things. 

It is but a few years since the founder of this library 
died, and his son now sits in his saddle at Fort Simpson. 
If you were to wander across the court, as I did to-day, 
and look into the Sales Shop, you would see the presen- 
tation sword of this last-generation Carnegie ignobly 
slicing bacon for an Indian customer. Sic transit gloria 
uiundi! 

1 80 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

What are the books which this sub-Arctic library sent 
out ? We get down on the floor and gently touch the his- 
toric old things. Isn't it Johnson who says, "I love to 
browse in a library" ? Judging by the dust and cobwebs, 
there hasn't been much browsing done among these vol- 
umes for years. Present-day Simpson has seldom "fed 
on the dainties that are bred in a book." Here is a first 
edition of The Spectator, and next it a Life of Garrick, 
with copies of Virgil, and all Voltaire and Corneille in the 
original. A set of Shakespeare with exquisite line draw- 
ings by Howard shows signs of hard reading, and so does 
the Apology for the Life of Mr. Colly Cibber. One won- 
ders how a man embedded in Fort Simpson, as a fly in 
amber, would ever think of sending to the Grand Pays for 
Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, yet we find it here, 
cheek by jowl with The Philosophy of Living or the IV ay 
to Enjoy Life and Its Comforts. The Animal Register of 
History, Politics, and Literature of the Year I/64 looks 
plummy, but we have to forego it. The lengthy titles of 
the books of this vintage, as for instance, Death-Bed 
Triumphs of Eminent Christians, Exemplifying the 
Power of Religion in a Dying Hour, bring to mind the 
small boy's definition of porridge — "filliiT, but not satis- 
fyin'." Two more little books with big titles are Actors' 
Budget of Wit and Merriment, Consisting of Monologues, 
Prologues and Epilogues, and The London Prisons, with 
an Account of the More Distinguished Persons Who 
Have Been Confined in Them. 

But the book that most tempts our cupidity is Memoirs 

of Miss A n, Who Was Educated For a Nun, with 

Many Interesting Particulars. We want that book, we 

181 



THE NEW NORTH 

want to take it on with us and read it when we reach the 
Land of the Eskimo, where the Mackenzie slips into the 
Arctic by all its silver mouths. We lift the volume up. 
and put it down again, and we hunger to steal it. Jekyll 
struggles with Hyde. At last the Shorter Catechism and 
the Westminster Confession of Faith triumph; we put it 
down' and softly close the door behind us. And ever since 
we have regretted our Presbyterian training. 

At Fort Simpson, it is like walking across a churchyard 
or through an old cathedral. Here men lived and wrought 
and hoped, cut off from their kind, and did it all with no 
thought of being heroic. We walk along the shore to 
watch Indian women busied in making a birchbark canoe 
and in washing clothes with washboards — the old order 
and the new. A little dive into the mosquito-ridden 
woods discloses a wonderful patch of Pyrola and a nest of 
Traills' flycatcher, and makes us wish that the minutes 
were longer and the mosquitoes fewer. What a beautiful 
thing this Pyrola is, with its inverted anthers and the cob- 
webby margins of its capsule! Its bracted, nodding flow- 
ers run through all shades of white, pale yellow, and dark 
yellow. 

Down on the beach we chat with a prospector and his 
son, a lad of fifteen, who are building a skiff in which to 
ascend the Liard, hunting gold. Yesterday a Mr. and 
Mrs. Carl and a Mr. and Mrs. Hall passed us on the river. 
Outfitted for two years, they will prospect for gold in the 
Nahanni Mountains and toward the headwaters of the 
Liard. One of the couples has just come out from Glas- 
gow and this is their honeymoon. We half envy them 
their journey. Can anything compare with the dear de- 

182 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

lights of travelling when you do not know and nobody 
knows just what lies round the next corner? 

The dogs at Simpson are "wicked." Picking our way 
among them, I particularly approve this term of the 
natives, attributing as it does a human conception and 




A Slavi Family at Fort Simpson 



malice aforethought to these long-legged wraiths. The 
first articulate sound an Indian child of the Mackenzie 
learns to make is "Mash!" an evident corruption of the 
French "Marche." This is what Shakespeare meant 
when he speaks of "a word to throw at a dog." A brown 
baby just emerged from the cocoon stage of the moss-bag 
toddles with uplifted pole into a bunch of these hungry 

183 



THE NEW NORTH 

mongrels and disperses them with a whack of the stick and 
the lordly "Mash !" of the superior animal. For our own 
part we are "scared stiff," but follow along in the wake of 




A Slavi Type from Fort Simpson 

our infant protector to a wee wooden church which stag- 
gers under the official title, "The Cathedral of St. David." 
We have had occasion to speak of the splendid service 
rendered to Northern and Western Canada by the Hud- 
son's Bay Company and by the Royal Northwest Mounted 

184 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

Police. A third factor through the years has been build- 
ing Empire with these. Are we not as a people too prone 
to minimise the great nation-building work performed by 
the scattered missionaries in the lone lands beyond the 
railway ? Ostensibly engaged in the work of saving souls, 
Canadian missionaries, both Roman and English, have 
opened the gates of commerce, prosecuted geographical 
discovery, tried to correct social evils, and added materi- 
ally to our store of exact science. Through their in- 
fluence, orphanages have been founded, schools estab- 
lished, and hospitals opened. Creeds take a secondary 
place to deeds in this land, and when you discuss a man, be 
he cleric or layman, the last thing you ask is, "To what 
church does he belong?" Incidentally, it does seem rather 
odd that with Scottish blood running through the veins 
of nine-tenths of the people of this North as yet no Pres- 
byterian missionary has penetrated beyond the latitude of 
Edmonton. The great Churches of England and Rome, 
north of the Athabasca, divide the field between them. 

The records of the whole missionary world show no 
more striking figure than that of Bishop Bompas of the 
Anglican Church. We have already had two glimpses 
of this young Cockney curate; once, hoisting his home- 
made Union Jack on the ox-cart at St. Cloud, and, again, 
passing north as the wild-fowl flew south in October, 1865, 
chronicled by the Chipewyan scribe merely as "a Protes- 
tant missionary coming in a canoe from the Portage." 
In the forty years of missionary life which intervened be- 
tween his coming into the North and his death in the 
Yukon just two years ago, only twice did the Bishop 
emerge from these Northern fastnesses. It is literal truth 
14 185 



THE NEW NORTH 

to state that no one on any part of the world's map has ever 
made so many long and toilsome journeys as did this man. 
With his sheep scattered over a country a million square 
miles in extent, we might compare a parochial visit of this 
parson to a barge- journey from London to Constanti- 
nople, replacing the European capitals by Hudson's Bay 
forts, and substituting for Europe's vineyards and pleas- 
ant vales an unbroken line of jack-pine and muskeg. 

We are told that Bishop Bompas's father was Dicken's 
prototype for Sergeant Buzfuz. A new vista would 'open 
up to the counsel for Mrs. Bardell could he turn from his 
chops and tomato-sauce to follow the forty-years' wander- 
ing in the wilderness of this splendid man of God, who suc- 
ceeded, if ever man succeeds, in following Paul's advice 
of keeping his body under. 

Bishops Bompas was one of the greatest linguists the 
Mother Country ever produced. Steeped in Hebrew and 
the classics when he entered the Northland, he immedi- 
ately set himself to studying the various native languages, 
becoming thoroughly master of the Slavi, Beaver, Dog- 
Rib, and Tukudk dialects. When Mrs. Bompas sent him 
a Syriac testament and lexicon, he threw himself with 
characteristic energy into the study of that tongue. There 
is something in the picture of this devoted man writing 
Gospels in Slavi, primers in Dog-Rib, and a Prayer Book 
in syllabic Chipewyan, which brings to mind the figure of 
Caxton bending his silvered head over the blocks of the 
first printing-press in the old Almonry so many years be- 
fore. What were the "libraries" in which this Arctic 
Apostle did his work? The floor of a scow on the Peace, 
a hole in the snow, a fetid corner of an Eskimo hut. His 

186 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

"Bishop's Palace," when he was not afloat, consisted of a 
bare room twelve feet by eight, in which he studied, cooked, 
slept, and taught the Indians. 

They tell you stories up here of seeing the good Bishop 
come back from a distant journey to some isolated tribe, 
followed at heel by a dozen little Indian babies, his disciples 
for the days to come. Bishop Bompas lived in one conti- 
nent, but manifested in two, keeping himself closely in 
touch with the religious and Church growth of the Old 
World. When the British press had been given over to 
any particular religious-controversial subject, and the 
savants had finally disposed of the matter to their own sat- 
isfaction, travelling out by summer traverse or winter dog- 
sled would come a convincing pamphlet by Bishop Bompas, 
to upset altogether the conclusions of the wranglers. 

There is one tale of this man which only those can ap- 
preciate who travel his trail. An Indian lad confides to 
us, "Yes, my name is William Carpenter — Bishop Bompas 
gave me my name, he was a good man. He wouldn't hurt 
anybody, he never hit a dog, he wouldn't kill a mosquito. 
He had not much hair on his head, and when it was nieet- 
su, when the Bishop eat his fish, he shoo that mosquito 
away and he say, 'Room for you, my little friend, and 
room for me, but this is not your place: go.' " 

We call upon the present incumbents of the little church 
of St. David. They are young people, the Rev. and Mrs. 
Day, putting in their first year in this Northern charge. 
Their home with its spotless floors and walls papered with 
old copies of The Graphic and Illustrated London News is 
restful and attractive. The garden of the parsonage 
shows an amount of patient work on the part of some one. 

187 



THE NEW NORTH 

Potatoes eighteen inches high and peas twice the height 
of this, with turnips and cabbages and cauliflower are 
good to look at. There are records to show that, years 
ago, Fort Simpson produced tomatoes and decent crops of 
barley. 

Entering the little church we see the neat font sent 




Interior of St. David's Cathedral 



here by Mrs. Bompas, "In dear memory of Lucy May 
Owindia, baptised in this Church, January, 1879." 
Owindia was one of the many red waifs that the good 
Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took into their big hearts. Her 
story is a sad one. Along the beach at Simpson, Friday, 
an Indian, in a burst of ungovernable temper murdered 
his wife and fled, leaving their one baby to perish. It was 
not until next day that the little one was found, unconscious 

188 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

and dying. The Bishop and Mrs. Bompas took the child 
into their loving care. To the name Owindia, which 
means The lJ T ceping One, was added the modern Lucy 
May, and the little girlie twined herself closely round the 
hearts of her protectors. When the time seemed ripe, 
Owindia was taken back to England to school, but the 
wee red plant would not flourish in that soil. She sick- 
ened and died. Hence the memorial and the inscription 
we read this July day. Much history of militant energy, 
much of endurance, and countless chapters of benevolence 
did the good Bishop write into the history of the North 
before, off on the Yukon side in 1906, "God's ringer 
touched him and he slept." 

Missionaries of the present day are not without their 
troubles. Mrs. Day tells of potato-whiskey making in 
some illicit still back in the mosquito-woods, the results of 
which she fears; and, even as we speak, an Indian lunatic 
pokes his head through the palings of the potato-patch. 
From far back in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, and from 
Fort Liard, the Hudson's Bay men have come to make 
their reports to Mr. Brabant at Simpson. They brought 
their wives and babies with them, brought also a quantity 
of beautiful porcupine-quill work, Fort Liard being one of 
the few places in the North where this art flourishes. To- 
morrow they will start back, tacking against the stream, 
as the imported brides are doing before them. 

To dive into the journals of the past, of which the loft 
above the offices here at Simpson is full, is even more in- 
teresting than talking with the people of the present. We 
take 1837, the year which saw the accession in England 
of the young and well-beloved Queen, and from these 

189 



THE NEW NORTH 

musty books unearth a running commentary of what is 
doing" in Fort Simpson in that year. 

"1837, January 1. The people were brought into the Hall, and 
enjoyed their meal with great appetites, being also treated to a 
glass of wine and a fathom of tobacco and a pipe. Wind East." 

"1837, February 11. Rabbits are numerous, but the ladies of 
the Establishment make no great effort in snaring them." 

" 183/, February 14. Late last night arrived a woman, Thaw- 
yase, and a boy, the family of the late Thoesty. They have all 
come to take refuge here as they are starving. The woman c.t 
dusk decoyed old Jack away to camp in the woods — and the old 
fellow has found a mate." 

One wonders if either Thawyase, the decoyed Jack, or 
the old chronicler was conscious of the fact that this was 
St. Valentine's Day. 

"1837, March 27. Two geese have been seen to-day, the first 
this season." 

"1837, May 2. Marcel sowed some oats. Mosquitoes begin 
to become annoying." 

"1837, May 5. Wild fowl are beginning to frequent the small 
lakes of the neighbourhood. The willows and young trees are now 
budding forth beautifully." 

"1837, May 18. Hope began to plough this morning with the 
bull, but as this is the first time he has been yoked, the day's work 
is found to be but poor." 

"1837, May ip. Felix and Roderick McLeod made twelve bags 
of pemmican to-day." 

"1837, May 21. The Mackenzie River broke up to-day, and 
continued drifting pretty thick till evening." 

190 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

"1837, June I 8- Some of the Indians killed a bear before the 
door and it supplied us with a little fresh meat." 

"183/, June 19. Flies so numerous that we are under the neces- 
sity of putting our cattle into the stable, otherwise they will fall 
victims to the cruel insects." 

"183?, June 20. Weather very suffocating, thermometer 85 
above at three p. m., not as much as a cloud to be seen in the 
firmament and not the least air to afford any refreshment ; this 
along with the solitude of the time is enough to make people dull. 
No Indian from any quarter : well supplied with ammunition last 
spring, they forget us when they can get their own mouths satis- 
fied. Ashley grinding barley in the steel mill." 

"183/, June 21. Le Marl has just brought in some fish and 
a little bearskin in order to get a chemise, he says he is not able 
to hunt without a chemise, as there are so many flies just now. 
I have taken it upon myself to give him the shirt on credit." 

Here a new hand writes the records, untrammelled by 
any orthog'raphic rules. 

"183/, June 24. Flys very numerus and trublsome to the 
Cartel." 

"183/, July 11. Starvan Indians going and coming ourly." 

''183/, July 13. Six squas arrived with plenty Bearrys — that's 
all they subsist on in this part of the River." 

"183J, July 26. Barley is getting ripe. But small birds nip 
off the ends of the stalks as fast as it ripens." 

"183'/, August 23. Last night the bull broke into one of the 
gardens where oats was sown and eat the whole up." 

" 1831, September 18. An Express arrived from Fort Norman 

191 



THE NEW NORTH 

with despatches from the Gentlemen of the Arctic Discovery Expe- 
dition, and it is most satisfying to learn that the first object of the 
Expedition was successfully accomplished : on the 4th August the 
Company's flag was planted on Point Barrow." 

"1837, September ipth. Louson put parchment in the window- 
frames." 

"1837, October 11. Ice is forming since yesterday along the 
beach." 

"1837, November 1. This being the holiday for All Saints, the 
men though no saints celebrated it off duty. The weather cold 
but fine." 

"1837, November 2. I have been these two days occupied with 
the blacksmith in making an oven, and this evening it being finished 
we give it a fair trial by placing a large trout in it for supper and 
it is found to answer most excellently." 

"1837, November 3. Strong northwest wind with drift and 
cold. About one o'clock of last night the Aurora had a most un- 
usual appearance, seemingly black in place of the white commonly 
observed and forming an arch from east to west, consisting of 
five streaks, here and there broken off." 

"1827, November 5. Blacksmith making iron runners for our 
traineaux from old gun-barrels." 

"1837, November 50. This being the anniversary of the Tutelar 
Saint of Scotland, we had in addition to our usual dinner a roasted 
swan and a moose-nose, a rice pudding, a cranberry tart, and a 
glass of wine." 

"1837, December I. I was obliged to give four pounds of dried 
meat to the dogs for there are some that are almost dead and they 
et all the windows of the Forge." 



192 



PROVIDENCE TO SIMPSON 

"1837, December 2. Three of the Fort women fell into a fit 
of insanity and kept all of the men at the Fort to hold them and 
prevent them devouring themselves.'' 

"1S37, December 25. Thermometer 35 below the cypher this 
morning, this being Christmas no labour done. Wind N. W." 

"1838, January 1. The morning was ushered in by a salute 
fired by our people at the windows and doors, after which they 
came to wish us a Happy New Year — and in return, in conformity 
to the custom of the country they were treated, the men with half 
a glass of brandy each, and the women with a kiss, and the whole 
of them with as many cakes as they choose to take and some 
raisins. One of our gentlemen who had a bottle of shrub treated 
them to a glass, and after some chit-chat conversation they retired, 
firing a salute on going out. In the evening they played at Blind- 
man's-buff, concluding the fete by a supper in the Hall. I also 
gave each of the men a fathom of twist tobacco and a clay pipe." 



CHAPTER XI 

FORT GOOD HOPE ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE 

"With souls grown clear 

In this sweet atmosphere, 
With influences serene, 

Our blood and brain washed clean, 
We've idled down the breast 



Of broadening tides. 



-Chas. G. D. Roberts. 



About ten o'clock on the evening of July ioth, in broad 
daylight, we push out from Fort Simpson, with the whole 




m 



Fort Simpson by the Light of the Aurora 

population, white, red, and parti-coloured, on the banks to 
bid us good-bye. We have seen present-day Simpson and 

194 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

opened for a little way the volume of the past. We try to 
imagine what it is like in winter-time, and a picture pushed 
into our hands at parting gives us another viewpoint, 
showing the hamlet photographed by the light of the 
Aurora. As we leave Fort Simpson, the Mackenzie's 
channel is a mile wide and it increases in width as we pro- 
ceed. For about seventy-five miles the course of the river 
is due northwest, running four miles an hour. The banks 
look low, but when the pilot takes us close in to shore, we 
see that it is the size of the river which has cheated our 
eyes, and the cliffs that seemed so low-lying will measure 
two hundred feet or over. At the Great Bend we im- 
pinge against two peaks, Mt. Camsell and Mt. Stand 
Alone, and here the Nahanni joins the Mackenzie. The 
great river takes a due north course for another thirty 
miles, and the Willow River flows in from the east. 

At this point the Mackenzie enters the Rockies, this 
great spinal mountain-chain of North America breaking 
into parallel ranges to allow the mighty flood to flow be- 
tween. We feel, as the boatman did on Lake Athabasca, 
that a day is as long as you can go without stopping. A 
ladder takes us to a seat by the side of Tenny Gouley in 
the pilot-house, who merely drops the window to give us 
an unobstructed view, and says nothing. Tenny Gouley 
is one of the rare people who understand. Talk of civ- 
ilising these half-breeds of the North! They have that 
gift of repose which we know nothing of, which we may 
hope to attain after we have lived through automobiles and 
air-ships and when many incarnations will have allayed 
the fever of that unrest which we so blatantly dub "prog- 



ress." 



195 



THE NEW NORTH 

It is an ancient something, this unmapped Mackenzie 
into whose silence we intrude. Before man was, these 
waters had cut for themselves a road to the ocean. These 
banks were once marked by the mammoth. Previous to 
the Glacial Age, prehistoric man here hunted prehistoric 
prey; eons passed; and when the Ice Age went out, willows 
and aspens occupied the silt, delicate flower-growth flour- 
ished, and birds sang in the branches. 

Three thousand miles of waterway, forest-fringed and 
rampart-guarded, and of its treasures the world knows 
naught ! They await man's development and acceptance — 
banks of pitch, wells of oil, outcroppings of coal, great 
masses of unmined salt, mineral wealth uncounted and un- 
guessed. Silent forests have followed us from where we 
entered the Athabasca, and these woods persist to where 
the great river divides into its delta channels. Of the 
mineral wealth of the Liard, the Peace, the Nahanni, and 
the half hundred other waterways tributary to the Mac- 
kenzie, practically nothing is known. There remain in 
these streams hundreds of miles unnavigated, and channels 
innumerable known only to the inconnu and the Indian. 

It is one hundred and twenty years since Mackenzie 
descended this stream to its mouth, "discovering" a river 
along whose shores centuries before had smoked the watch- 
fires and risen the tepees of an anterior race, wanderers 
from Asia, who here, guiltless alike of onlooker or chron- 
icler, lived and loved and worked out their drama of life. 
Age follows age, a new generation is evolved in the new 
habitat, and in time these once-migrants from Asia are 
dubbed "the red men" and "the American Indian." 

We watch out the night with Tenny Gouley. In the 

196 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

early morning, sharply turning a corner, we flush a mixed 
family of water-fowl — gulls in great variety, something 
that looks like a brant, and a loon with its uncanny laugh- 
ter. Snipe are on every batture, and sand-pipers, with 
kingfishers and all the lesser waders. The boreal summer 
is short and if broods are to be raised there is no time to 
waste. A riot of blossoms fringes the banks — the up- 
lifted magenta torches of the fireweed, tufts of vivid 
golden-rod, the pink petals of the rose, and a clustering 
carpet of moss dotted with the dead white of the dwarf 
cornel. Now and again a splash breaks the silence, as 
great slices of the bank, gnawed under by the swollen 
river, slip into the current, carrying each its cargo of up- 
standing spruce. So the channel of the Mackenzie is ever 
being modified, and no permanent chart of its course can 
be attempted. 

Winter changes all this. With October the leaves fall 
and the waters begin to crisp into ice, fishes and fowl part 
company, the birds fly south to kinder skies, the inconnu 
hurry northward seeking the sea. Out of the sky comes 
the snow, the half-breed's "Le convert dn bon Dieu," silent, 
soft, and all-covering. The coat of fox and rabbit and 
ptarmigan whitens, too. It is the coming of stern winter. 
Wandering Dog-Rib, Slavi, and Loucheux, lone trapper, 
the people of each isolated fur-post, must alike take warn- 
ing. God pity man or beast who enters the six months 
of a Mackenzie winter unfortified by caches of food or un- 
witting of shelter. 

According to Tenny Gouley there are but two seasons 
in this country: the ice season and the mosquito season. 
He likes winter best. As he holds the wheel in those clever 

197 



THE NEW NORTH 

hands of his, we fill and light his pipe for him, and half a 
dozen of his illuminating phrases give us a clear-cut etch- 
ing of the winter story. From the lowest form of life to 
the highest it is a struggle for existence. Sinuous as a 
serpent, the mink in his man-envied coat winds among the 
willows on rapine bent, the marten preys upon the field- 
mouse, the lynx hunts the hare, each form of life pursues a 
lower while hiding from a higher, and all are the prey of 
the great hunter, man. 

In these high latitudes it is the wind that is feared 
rather than the intense cold. Before the coming of the 
missionary, the Indian of the Mackenzie basin heard in 
the winter wind no monition. The storm spoke not to 
him of Divine wrath or an outraged Deity. The wind 
was the voice of God, but it assured the heathen Slavi of 
protection and power — the Gitchi Manitou coming out of 
the all-whiteness to talk with his children. 

Spring up here is but a flutter of invisible garments; 
even when one is saying "Spring," full-blown summer is 
hot afoot. In high noon, in the open places, pools of water 
form in the ice. With glee is hailed the honk of the first 
wild goose, the coats of ptarmigan arid rabbit thin and 
darken. There is water on the trail of the kit-fox. The 
subsidiary streams that feed the Mackenzie fill their banks 
and flush the rotting ice. With a crash, the drift-logs, 
with pan-ice and floating islands and all the gathered 
debris, roll headlong to the frozen ocean. 

Do we wonder that Indians worship the great forces of 
Nature? Gloomy and wide-reaching between her banks 
of tamarack and spruce, now opening into a lake expan- 
sion, here narrowing between her stony ramparts, but 

198 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

ever hurrying on and on and on to that far ocean of ice, 
the Mackenzie has always been good to her own, the self- 
contained and silent people along her banks. In this vast 
land men speak not of bread as the staff of life; their un- 
voiced prayer is, "Give us our fish in due season." From 
the waters of this river, since man was, have the Indians 
drawn and dipped and seined their sustenance — inconnu, 
jack-fish, grayling, white-fish, and loche. The wide 
bosom of the Mackenzie, in winter's ice or summer's spate, 
forever has been the people's highway — a trail worn 
smooth by sled-runner and moccasin in the ice-season, 
melting its breast in the spring-time to open a way to the 
questing bow of the birch-bark. 

Along these banks, forgotten tepee-poles, deserted fish- 
stage, and lonely grave remain, a crumbling commentary 
of yesterday, a hint of recurring to-morrows. Son suc- 
ceeds father, race replaces race, but the great Mackenzie 
flows on, and, as it flows, unwritten history along these 
banks is ever in the making. Tragedy and triumph, self- 
aggrandisement and self-obliteration, are here as well as 
in the noisy world we have left. Lessons these are for us, 
too, if we bring the keen eye and listening ear. Among 
Mackenzie tribes no Yellow-Knife, Dog-Rib, or Slavi 
starved while another had meat, no thievish hand despoiled 
the cache of another. A man's word was his bond, and 
a promise was kept to the death. Not all the real things 
of life are taught to the Cree by the Christian. Courage is 
better than culture, playing the game of more importance 
than the surface niceties of civilisation, to be a man now of 
more moment than to hope to be an angel hereafter. 

About noon we reach Fort Wrigley, and are boarded 

199 



THE NEW NORTH 

by priests and Indians all interested in the new steamer 
and impressed with its size. One asks if it is a boat or 
an island, and another declares it is "just like a town." 
Fort Wrigley is an inconspicuous post with a dreary 
enough record of hunger and hardship. We find it rich 
in flowers and will always remember it as the one place in 
the North in which we gathered the fringed gentian 
(Gcntiana crinata) with its lance-shaped leaves, delicately- 
fringed corollas, and deep violet blue. The fringed gen- 
tian is rapidly becoming a thing of the past in a great many 
localities, and it gives us pleased surprise to find it far up 
in latitude 63 °. Purple asters are here, too, and the heart- 
shaped seed-pods of shepherd's-purse or mothers-heart. 
Wrigley adds to our collection the green-penciled flowers 
of the grass of Parnassus, with wild flax, and both pink 
and purple columbines already forming seed. 

Below Wrigley rugged ranges border both sides of the 
river at a distance from the shore-line of ten or twelve 
miles, and we come to Roche Trempe-l'eau or "The Rock 
by the Riverside," an outcrop of Devonian limestone ris- 
ing on the right bank a sheer fifteen hundred feet above the 
river. We come into view of the "boucans" or beds of 
lignite coal which have been continuously burning here 
since Mackenzie saw them in 1789 and mistook their smoke 
for tepee fires. At this point of his journey, had Macken- 
zie been a timorous man, he would have turned back, for 
natives came to meet him and told him with great empress- 
ment that it would require several winters to get to the 
sea and that old age would come upon him before the 
period of his return. He would also encounter monsters 
of gigantic stature adorned with wings. They added that 

200 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

there were two impossible falls in the river, and described 
the people of the Arctic coast as possessing the extraor- 
dinary power of killing with their eyes. These Indians 
told Mackenzie of "small white buffalo" which they hunted 
to the westward. Perhaps they meant the mountain sheep, 
the Sass-sei-yeuneh or "Foolish Bear" of the Slavis. 
It is midnight in the midst of a howling wind-storm 




Indians at Fort Norman 



when we come abreast of Fort Norman where Bear River, 
the outlet of Great Bear Lake, makes into the Mackenzie. 
It is not an easy thing to handle the big steamer in a 
swift current and in the teeth of a storm like this, and 
we have been in more comfortable places at midnight. 
However, after running with the current, backing water, 
and clever finesse, we come safely to anchor against the 
shore opposite the Fort, under the lee of Bear Rock. This 
is a fourteen-hundred foot peak which starts up from 
15 201 



THE NEW NORTH 

the angle formed by the junction of the Bear River with 
the Mackenzie. 

The water of Bear River is clear and its current swift 
through the whole of its hundred-mile course. Great Bear 
Lake, known chiefly to the outside world from the fact that 
Sir John Franklin established winter-quarters here at Fort 
Confidence, is an immense sheet of water, probably 11,500 
square miles in extent, and bigger even than Great Slave 
Lake. Five arms meeting in a common centre give the 
lake an unusual shape, the longest distance from shore to 
shore being one hundred and fifty miles. The south and 
west banks are well wooded, and we are surprised to learn 
that the lake remains open at the outlet until very late 
in the autumn and sometimes throughout the whole winter. 

March sees the greatest depth of snow at Great Bear 
Lake, probably three feet. In mid-April the thaws begin, 
and by May-day arrive the earlier water-fowl. By the 
end of May the herbaceous plants begin to leaf, frogs are 
heard, and there is bright light at midnight. The end of 
July brings blueberries, and at this time stars are visible 
at midnight. September is ushered in by flurries of snow, 
and by the tenth of October the last of the wild-fowl 
depart ; but it is often Christmas Day before the centre of 
the lake freezes over. 

When we awake it is Sunday, July 12th, Orangeman's 
Day, with no one going round with a chip on his shoulder, 
and nobody to whistle "Boyne Water." The wind falling, 
the steamer is turned and we bear away across the river to 
Fort Norman, leaving the shelter of Bear Rock, the "Nest 
of the Wind" of the Indian. Tradition and superstition 
hang round this great butte, with its heart of coloured gyp- 

202 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

sum several hundred feet in thickness, and on its face we 
plainly see the three beaver-skins that the Great Spirit, 
"in the beginning," spread out there to dry. We find Fort 
Norman a beautiful place in the sunshine of this Sunday 




Roman Catholic Church at Fort Norman 

morning, the souls of its scanty populace well looked after 
by Roman and Protestant missionary. Bishop Breynat 
is expected on the mission boat coming up the river, and all 
is excitement among the sheep belonging to his particular 
flock. The parson of the other fold is in his library, and, 

203 



THE NEW NORTH 

visiting him, we duly admire his neat garden of potatoes 
and peas, beets and turnips. The reverend gentleman 
owns up to finding Norman lonely in winter and recalls 
with appreciation his last charge in the outports of New- 
foundland, where the tedium was relieved by tennis and 
pink-teas. 

Seldom have we seen a more beautiful vista than the 





The Ramparts of the Mackenzie 

up-climbing path leading from the shore to the Roman 
chapel at the head of the hill. It is bordered by flaming 
fireweed and lined with the eager faces of children dressed 
in their Sunday best, ready for morning mass and awaiting 
the blessing of their Bishop. Wherever the willow-herb 
flourishes there a Guadet is serving The Company. One 
was in charge at lonely Wrigley, and we find his brother 
here. 

204 






FORT GOOD HOPE 

Leaving Norman before church-time, we travel on, the 
glory of the peerless day reflected in the face of every 
one on board. We float between two spurs of the Rock- 
ies, and about eight in the evening pass Roche Carcajou, 
looking in vain for the wolverine the name calls for. The 
Indians would seem to be strangely inconsistent in this 
connection. If there is one animal they fear it is the 
carcajou, and with him they have an old, old pact: the 
Indian on his side promises never to shoot a wolverine, 
and that cunning thief agrees to leave unmolested the 
cache of the Red man. While this bargain still holds, 
since the day when ammunition first came into the coun- 
try no Indian has passed this rocky replica of the carcajou 
without firing a shot at the face of the cliff. 

It is an hour before midnight when we reach one of 
the two greatest spectaculars of our whole six months' 
journeying, — the Ramparts. The great river which has 
been running at a width of several miles, here narrows 
to five hundred yards, and for a distance of five or six miles 
forces its flow between perpendicular walls of limestone 
three hundred feet high. Between the cliffs, scarped by 
Nature into turrets, towers, and castellated summits, the 
great Mackenzie, "turned on edge," flows, maintaining a 
steady rate of four or five miles an hour. The depth of the 
water equals the visible height of the palisaded walls. In 
spring, the ice jams the stupendous current. The dammed- 
up water once lifted a skiff bodily, leaving it, when the 
flood subsided, a derelict on the cliffs above. 

As we pass in silence we can but look and feel. One 
day a Canadian artist will travel north and paint the 
Ramparts, some poet, gifted with the inevitable word, here 

205 



THE NEW NORTH 

write the Canadian Epic. Awed and uplifted, our one 
wish is to be alone; the vision that is ours for one hour 
of this Arctic night repays the whole summer's travel. 
The setting of the picture is that ineffable light, clear yet 
mellow, which without dawn and without twilight rises 
from flowing river to starless heavens, and envelopes the 
earth as with a garment, — the light that never was on sea 



I ""'Hi 




Rampart House on the Porcupine near the Mackenzie Mouth 

or land. We could not have chosen a more impressive 
hour in which to pass the portal into the Arctic World. 
A hundred yards from the entrance to the Ramparts, 
a group of Tndians has found foothold at the base of the 
escarpment. They have been waiting for three days to 
signal our arrival, and as they catch sight of the big 
steamer they cry out their greeting and fire a volley from 
their old-fashioned rifles. The sound reverberates from 
rock to rock, ricochets, and is carried on to waiting In- 

206 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

dians on the other side lower down. They repeat the 
salute, and others take it up. Signals 'are flashed from 
each little camp, the lights being repeated in the dancing 
river; and so it is by salvos of musketry and answering 
watch-fires that, at midnight in broad daylight, we reach 
Fort Good Hope under the Arctic Circle. 

The Arctic Circle! When we used to sit on uneasy 
school-benches and say our "joggafy" lesson, what did 
that term spell for us? Icebergs, polar bears, and the 
snows of eternal winter. Nine-tenths of the people in 
America to-day share the same idea, and so far as they 
think of the Arctic Circle at all, think of it as a forbidding 
place, a frozen silence where human beings seldom pene- 
trate. What did we find there? Approaching the shore, 
we stand in the bow with the pilot and his daughter, whose 
name suggests the Stone Age, — Mrs. Pierre la Hache. 
Tenny wears his "other clothes" and a resplendent l'As- 
sumption belt, for this is his home. "It looks like a swan 
on the water," he says, when the first white houses come 
into view. "You like it, do you not?" "Like it? Good 
Hope is God's Country!" There is no place like home, 
even when it is the Arctic Circle! 

The populace look down upon us from the high bank, 
every wiggle of the dogs' tails indicating the general impa- 
tience at the time it takes the big boat to make a landing. 
Down the steps comes a stately figure, Mr. C. P. Gaudet, 
the head and brains of Good Hope. Of the two thousand 
servants of the Hudson's Bay Company, this is the man 
who has the greatest number of years of active service 
to his credit. Mr. Gaudet has continuously served The 
Company for fifty-seven years, and his ambition is to put 

207 



THE NEW NORTH 

in three years more. The Company gives its employes a 
pension after thirty years' service, and this veteran of 
Good Hope surely deserves two pensions. The steps are 
almost precipitous, but the old gentleman insists upon com- 
ing down to present in person his report to his superior 
officer. Then the two climb up the bank together, the 
younger man giving a strong arm to the older. We fol- 
low, and half-way up the two figures stop, ostensibly for 
Mr. Gaudet to point out to Mr. Brabant the view up river. 
We suspect the halt is to allow the Fort Hope Factor to 
get breath, for the sky-line stairway is hard on asthma. 

Reaching the top, we find the air heavy with the per- 
fume of wild roses, and we can scarcely make our way 
through the sea of welcoming Indians. Old people grasp 
our hands as if we were life-time friends just back from a 
far journey. Young men greet us as long-lost chums, 
the women call to the children, and there seems to be a 
reception committee to rout out the old beldames, little 
children, and the bed-ridden: it is hand-shaking gone 
mad. We shake hands with every soul on the voting- 
list of Good Hope, to say nothing of minors, suffragettes, 
and the unfranchised proletariat, before at last we are 
rescued by smiling Miss Gaudet and dragged in to one of 
the sweetest homes in all the wide world. 

We meet Mrs. Gaudet, a dear old lady with a black cap, 
the pinkest of pink cheeks, and the kind of smile that 
brings a choky feeling into your throat and makes you 
think of your mother. She gives us home-made wine and 
gaieties, and as we smell the mignonette flowering in the 
window-ledge and look around the walls of the "homey" 
room we wonder if this really can be the "Arctic Circle, 

208 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

23^2° from the North Pole, which marks the distance that 
the sun's rays," etc., etc., as the little geographies so 
blithely used to state. On the walls are the Sunday School 
tickets that the young Gaudets, now grey-haired men and 
women, earned by reciting the Catechism when they were 
little boys and girls — the same old tickets that flourish In 
the latitudes below. Here a pink Prodigal feeds sky-blue 
swine in a saffron landscape, and off there a little old lady 
in a basque leads a boy in gaiters and a bell-crowned hat 
down a shiny road. They seem to be going on a picnic, 
and the legend runs, — "Hagar and Ishmael her son into 
the desert led, with water in a bottle and a little loaf 
of bread." 

Thirty years ago when Miss Gaudet was a little girl 
she got her first Scripture lesson from an R. C. Sister, the 
story of our old Mother in the first garden. One Sunday 
was review day, and this question arose: "And how did 
God punish Adam and Eve for their disobedience ?" Quick 
came the girlie's reply, "They had to leave The Company's 
service!" 

Mrs. Gaudet thinks people rush very much nowadays. 
"We get a mail every year without fail, and sometimes 
there is a second mail." This is to her the height of mod- 
ernism. That second mail is an interesting one. A letter 
written in Montreal in winter and addressed to Fort Good 
Hope crosses Canada by the C. P. R. to Vancouver, by 
coastwise steamer it travels north and reaches the Yukon. 
Then some plucky constable of the Mounted Police makes 
a winter patrol and takes the precious mail-bags by dog- 
sled across an unmarked map to Fort Macpherson on Peel 
River. Thence the Montreal-written letter is carried by 

209 



THE NEW NORTH 

Indian runner south to Good Hope on the Arctic Circle. 

We love to talk with Mrs. Gaudet, she is so dear. 
Mother-love and devotion to The Company, — these are the 
two key-notes of her character. Looking back through 
the years, she tells of a visit she made "outside" to Mon- 
treal when she was a young mother — it was just fifty years 
ago, — measles attacked her three babies and within a week 
they all died, "Le bon Dieu prit les tons, mcs trois jolis 
cnfants!" Some years after this at Macpherson an Es- 
kimo woman stole another of her babies, snatching it from 
a swing in the fort yard, and not yielding it up until it 
was torn from her by force. 

We wander out into the midnight daylight where with 
dogs and Indians the whole settlement is still a stirred-up 
ant-hill. Splendid vegetable gardens are in evidence 
here, — potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbages. Should we 
reach the North Pole itself we would expect there a 
Hudson's Bay fort, its Old World courtesy and its potato- 
patch. As we pass the store of the "free-trader," he says, 
"Yes, Mrs. Gaudet is a sweet woman, kindly, and dear, 
but she doesn't approve of me. She makes a point of not 
seeing me as she passes here twice a day on her way to 
church." 

"Why?" we ask, much surprised. 

"Oh," with a laugh, "you see, I sort of trade in oppo- 
sition to the H. B. Company, and a fellow who would do 
this comes mighty near having horns and a tail!" 

We step into the "Little Church of the Open Door," and 
sit down and think. The quaint altar and pictures, the 
hand-carved chairs, and the mural decorations all point 
to the patient work of priests. We see across the lane 

210 



FORT GOOD HOPE 

the home of the R. C. clergy, looking like a transplanted 
Swiss chalet and carrying on each door-lintel the name of 
a saint, — St. Matthew, St. Bartholomew, St. John. From 
the shrubbery outside wafts in the sweet old-world perfume 
of wild-roses. Our thoughts will often drift back to this 
restful little sanctuary, "Our Lady of Good Hope," the 
mission founded here in the year 1859 by M* Henri Grol- 
lier, R. C. missionary priest of Montpelier. 



CHAPTER XII 

ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

"Behold, I sing a pagan song of old, 
And out of my full heart, 
Hold forth my hands that so I would enfold 
The Infinite thou art. 

What matter all the creeds that come and go, 
The many gods of men? 
My blood outcasts them from its joyous flow." 

— A Pagan Hymn. 

"The Eskimo is a short, squat, dirty man who lives on 
blubber," said text-books we had been weaned on, and 
this was the man we looked for. We didn't find him. 

It was at Arctic Red River, one hundred and ninety 
miles of river-travel since we cut the Polar Circle, that 
we came upon our first Eskimo, the true class-conscious 
Socialist of Karl Marx, the one man without a master 
on the American continent. A little band of Kogmollycs 
they were, men, women, and kiddies, who had come in to 
trade silver-fox skins for tobacco and tea at the Post of the 
Hudson's Bay Company. 

On the rocks they sat, waiting for the new steamer to 
make her landing, and much excited were they over the 
iron bowels of this puffing kayak of the white men. An 
Eskimo generally lets you know what he thinks, and this 
is a basic difference between him and the Indian. An 
Indian is always trying to impress you with his impor- 

212 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

tance ; he thinks about his dignity all day and dreams of it 
at night. The Mackenzie River Eskimo is a man who 
commands your respect the moment you look at him, and 
yet he is withal the frankest of mortals, affable, joyous, 
fairly effervescing with good-humour. His attitude to- 
ward the world is that of a little half-Swiss, half-Chinese 
baby friend of mine who, in an ecstacy of good-will when 
she saw her first Christmas-tree, clutched me tightly round 
the neck with, "Everybody are my friend." 

One of the Kogmollycs, rejoicing in the name of Wilfrid 
Laurier, strode on deck with the swing of a cavalryman 
and signified his willingness to trade. Loading down my 
hunting-coat with pictures, pipes, tobacco, looking-glasses, 
needles, files, knives, I climbed over the cliffs with him 
to his hut. Down on the floor we sat. Wilfrid put his 
treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and 
the barter began. "What for this fellow, huh?" and he 
held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular minc- 
ing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin 
of a baby-seal. The first thing he asked for was scented 
soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill 
hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was 
accompanied with smiles, each bargain sealed with a hand- 
shake. 

Wilfrid Laurier is doing his part toward bridging the 
old chasm of animosity existing between the Eskimo and 
their next-door neighbours, the Loucheux Indians to the 
South. Wilfrid, in taking to himself a Loucheux woman 
to wife, has done what the Seventh Henry of England did 
when he married Elizabeth of York. Wilfrid's son and 
heir holds the same place in Northern history as did Henry 

213 



THE NEW NORTH 

VIII, who united in himself the claims of the rival Roses 
of York and Lancaster. 

Mrs. Ila-la-Rocko asked us into her hut, where we re- 




A Kogmollyc Family 

clined on fur mats while the whole family, wreathed in 
smiles, tumbled over themselves to do us honour. One by 
one they danced for us, stopping to tell their names and 
to ask ours. "Major Jabussy," "Missa Blown," they got 
the names all right but applied them promiscuously, and 

214 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

then went into roars of laughter at their blunder. The 
merriment was infectious. Let no one waste further sym- 
pathy over the poor benighted Eskimo of this Canadian 
North. The Mackenzie River Eskimo is, with perhaps 
the one exception of an Arab I fraternized with in Chicago 
at the World's Fair, the most splendid specimen of physi- 
cal manhood I have ever seen ; in physique he stood out in 
splendid contrast to the Europeans and Americans who 
were investigating him and his. Arrow-straight and six 
feet tall, mark him as he swings along the strand. His 
is the carriage and bearing of the high-bred Tartar. This 
man has "arrived"; he has an air of assuredness that in 
the drawing-rooms "Outside" you seldom see. 

The Eskimo of the Arctic foreshore are of two tribes: 
the Kogmollycs to the east of the Mackenzie mouth, the 
Nunatalmutes, Dwellers in the Hills, or Deermen, origi- 
nally from the interior to the West, but now for the great 
part making their home at Herschel Island, eighty miles 
from the Mackenzie delta, attracted there by the oppor- 
tunity of working for the American whalers. 

One of the striking figures of the North is Oo-vai- 
oo-ak, headman of the Kogmollycs, living in dignified hap- 
piness with his children and his two wives. This second 
wife was the cause of much comment among us. How 
did she happen? It was this way. Mr. Oo-vai-oo-ak 
married Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Elder when they were both 
young. Children were born to them, the big seal was 
plenty, succulent beluga-steaks graced the board, and the 
years followed one another as smoothly as glacial drift 
or the strip of walrus-blubber that the last baby drops 
down its red gullet as a plummet sinks in a well. 

215 



THE NEW NORTH 

One clay after a big hunt, as Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak placed 
before her lord the matutinal mess of whale-skin boiled 
to that particular rubber-boot consistency which was his 
taste, she said, "I'm not as young as I was, you enter- 
tain much, the household cares are heavy, I'd like you to 
get another wife to help me with the work." Chief Oo- 
vai-oo-ak chewed upon the whale-skin and the suggestion 
of his spouse. Out in his kayak, dodging the icebergs, he 
turned it over in his mind for half a day; and as the out- 
come of his cogitations Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Younger, 
a rollicking and comely maiden, joined the family circle. 

How does it work out ? For ten days I sat round their 
hospitable fire trying hard for the viewpoint of each mem- 
ber of this Farthest North family of fellow-Canadians. I 
have lived under many roof-trees, but never have I seen 
a more harmonious family, nor a menage of nicer adjust- 
ment. Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Elder, full of the mellow 
juice of life, waggish and keen, "quick at the uptak'," as 
the Scotch say, presides over her household with dignity, 
never for a moment relaxing her hold on the situation. 
Chief Oo-vai-oo-ak wisely leaves the interior economy of 
the household in the hands of the women. He is the quiet, 
dignified gentleman with an easy manner that courtiers 
and plenipotentiaries extraordinary might envy. His six 
feet two inches of height, magnificent physique and superb 
carriage would mark him out as a man of distinction at 
any race-course, polo-meet, or political reception where 
men of the world forgather. 

Observing the small, strong, exquisitely-formed hands 
and feet of the Oo-vai-oo-aks, the almost-white complex- 
ions dashed with ruddy scarlet, the easy grace that even 

216 






ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

the children have, and, above all, the simple dignity which 
compels respect, one recognizes here an ancestry harking 
back to Old World culture and distinction. 



How does the young wife fit in? 



No suffragette need 




Roxi and the Oo-vai-oo-ak Family 

break a lance for her, demanding a ballot, dower-rights, 
and the rest of it. She is happy and busy. All day long 
she sings and laughs as she prepares the family fish and 
feast of fat things, she pays deference to her co-wife, 
romps with the children, and expands like an anemone 
under the ardent smile of her lord. When the grave ques- 

1G 217 



THE NEW NORTH 

tion was under discussion regarding the exchange of her 
pendant bead-and-shell ear-rings for a pair we had brought 
from the shops of the white men, the two spouses dis- 
cussed the matter in all its phases earnestly together, as 
chummy as two school-girls. 

The Oo-vai-oo-ak family was a puzzle to the on-lookers, 
who sought in vain for some one of the three contracting 
parties to pity. They were all so abundantly happy, each 
in his or her own way, that Walking Delegate could find 
no crack here for the opening wedge of discord. If no 
one is to be pitied, then surely for this new departure in 
matrimony there must be some one for the virtuous to 
blame. But why? 

Kipling declares, "There's never a law of God or man 
runs north of fifty-three. " The Eskimo has worked out 
his life-problem independent quite from the so-called civil- 
isations evolved to the south of him. He is his own man. 

In the rest of America and in Europe we have formu- 
lated a rule of "One man, One wife," allowing an elasticity 
of the rule in Chicago and elsewhere, so that it may read, 
"One man, one wife at a time." Are we so sure of results 
that we are in a position to force our rule upon the Es- 
kimo? 

Following the animals that God has ordained shall be 
their daily bread, in little communal bands they thread the 
silent places of the North. On the Arctic foreshore we 
have a people different to all other peoples ; here is no 
inherited wealth, no accumulation of property. A man's 
skill as a hunter determines his ability to support others, 
the pursuit of seal is the pursuit of happiness; life and 
liberty belong to all. In many of the little wandering 

218 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

groups or septs or clans the women outnumber the men. 
A mighty hunter is able to kill seals at will and provide 
blubber enough for two or even three wives. The Cana- 
dian Eskimo is the direct antithesis of the French-Canadian 
in the matter of large families ; seldom are more than three 
children born to one mother. Now, the crux of the matter 
is this: is it better for one man to marry and provide 
for one wife and three children, leaving on the community 
a floating sisterhood of unattached females, or is it more 
sane and generous for the Northland Nimrod to marry as 
many wives as he can comfortably support, and raise up 
olive-branches to save from extermination the men of the 
Kogmollycs, the honourable people of the Nunatalmutes ? 

The fact that the women prefer a vulgar-fraction of a 
man, an Eskimo equity in connubial bliss, to spearing wal- 
rus on their own account is a significant factor in the 
problem. And before we piously condemn either the lord 
or the lady in the case, it is well that we adjust our judg- 
ment to the latitude of 68° North and take cognizance of 
the fact that no seductive "Want Columns" in the daily 
press here offer a niche whereby unappropriated spinsters 
may become self-supporting wage-earners as chaste type- 
writers, school-teachers, Marcel-wavers, or manicurists. 
To keep the vital spark aglow you must kill walrus and 
seal in your own proper person or by proxy, for no other 
talent of body or grace of mind is convertible into that sus- 
taining meat and heating blubber which all must have in 
order to live. 

Economically, then, a woman must herself hunt or have 
a man or part of a man to hunt for her. Ethically, it 
works out beautifully, for each partner to the hymeneal 

219 



THE NEW NORTH 

bargain is fat and full of content, happiness fairly oozing 
out of every oily pore. And is not happiness the goal of 
human endeavour, whether a man seeks it amid the electric 
lights, subtle perfumes, and dreamy waltz-music of a New 
York ballroom, or finds it seated with his community wives 
on a hummock of ice under the Aurora? 

I wouldn't like to picture our cousin the Eskimo woman 
as being always content with a circulating decimal of a 
husband instead of a whole unit, nor would such present- 
ment be just. The shield, like most shields, has a reverse. 
Last winter, at the Mackenzie Delta, one Eskimo bride of 
seventeen took her fourth consecutive husband. She is 
dark but comely, but truth will not carry the analogy 
further. I have yet to see the Eskimo who is like a bunch 
of camphire in the vineyards of Engedi. Three winters 
ago, at Baillie Island, the three-times-widowed one had 
both her feet amputated as the result of exposure to cold. 

In the latest wedding, the one that came under our notice 
(we hesitate to call it the last), the much-sought one was 
given away by her brother-in-law Su-pi-di-do, or Sour 
Potatoes. The wedding breakfast consisted of seal-meat, 
frozen rotten fish, and muktuk (whale-meat). The cere- 
mony took place at the igloo of Su-pi-di-do, with fifty 
guests present, and as the size of Su-pi-di-do's bungalow 
is ten by twelve, one needs only suggest what the old hymn 
speaks of as "odours of Edom and offerings Divine.'' 

The festivities began to warm up about midnight. An 
old chap, with a retrospective look in his left eye peering 
back through eighty midnight suns and noonday nights, 
set the ball a-rolling by raising his hands above his head 
and hopping about in the middle-distance. His wife, a 

220 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

gay old girl of twice his age, lilted a song, and the guests 
joined in the chorus; line by line in a minor key the wed- 
ding song was sung, the air being confined to three notes. 
After each line came the chorus twice repeated, 

"Ai, yea, yae ! Yae, yae, ya — yae !" 

Dancing was kept up to an early hour. Overcome by the 
air, respiratory and vocal, we made our adieus to the crip- 
pled but captivating bride, pushing our way through the 
ghostly dogs and sleeping babies at two a. m. 

By natural gifts and temperament the Eskimo is prob- 
ably the most admirable, certainly the most interesting, 
and by circumstances the most misunderstood and misrep- 
resented of all the native races of America. The Eskimo 
of any one group would seem within historic times to have 
known but little of other bands than his own. Yet some- 
times they met. There is an island, called Barter Island, 
in the Arctic at the dividing line between Alaska and the 
Canadian Yukon Territory, one hundred and fifty miles 
west of Herschel. For years this was a trading rendez- 
vous for four peoples : the Kogmollycs or Mackenzie Delta 
Eskimo, the Alaska Eskimo, and the Indians and Nunatal- 
mute Eskimo whose habitat lay due south of Barter Island. 
To this point the Cape Barrow Eskimo in the old days 
brought their most precious medium of exchange, — a pe- 
culiar blue jade, one bead of which was worth six or seven 
fox-skins. And thereby hangs a tale. Mineralogists as- 
sure us there is no true jade in North America, so the 
blue labret ornamenting the lip of Roxi must have come 
as Roxi's ancestors came, by a long chain of exchanges 
from Siberia or from China. 

221 



THE NEW NORTH 

This trading tryst at Barter Island was made an occa- 
sion of joy and merriment. In imagination we see the 
chiefs in their kayaks, the old men, the women, and the 
babies in the slower and more commodious oomiaks, mak- 
ing their way across the lonely ocean to exchange gifts and 
courtesies with their half-known kin. The barter consum- 
mated, these Northland voyageurs had their yearly dance 
and sing-song and orgy of delight. No shooting the 
chutes, no pop-corn, no pink lemonade, no red-hots nor 
"fr-resh Virginia peanuts, 1-large sacks and well-f -filled 
and f-five a bag!", but the Arctic concomitants of these, — 
boiled beluga-skin, luscious strips of walrus-blubber, and 
frozen fish that smells to high heaven. Joy is the same, 
gastronomic and aesthetic, in the latitude of Boston and the 
latitude of Barter Island. It is only the counters that are 
different. 

Meagre are the bits of knowledge of the Eskimo that 
have floated down into our ken through the ages; on the 
icy edge of things this unique and fascinating people 
worked out their drama, the world unknowing by the world 
forgot. The white men who reached the Eskimo land 
from the south were discoverers following to the sea the 
three great rivers that disembogue into the Polar Sea: 
the Mackenzie, Coppermine, Back or Great Fish. The 
first of these explorers was Samuel Hearne who, in 1771, 
followed the Coppermine to the Frozen Ocean. For the 
northern natives their first contact with white explorers 
was a disastrous one, for at Bloody Falls on the Copper- 
mine Hearne's Indians set upon the only band of Eskimo 
they saw and almost exterminated them. Sir John Frank- 
lin in 1820 was more happy. He says, "The Eskimo 

222 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

danced and tossed their hands in the air to signify their 
desire for peace; they exhibited no hostile intention; our 
men saluted them by taking off their hats and making 
bows." Back, who explored the Back or Great Fish River 
in 1834, has this tribute of respect and appreciation. He 
says, "I called out c Tima (Peace), and putting their hands 
on their breasts they also called out 'Tima.' I adopted 
the John Bull fashion of shaking them each heart- 
ily by the hand; patting their breasts, I conveyed to 
them that the white man and the Eskimo were very good 
friends. They were good natured, and they understood 
the rights of property, for one of them having picked up a 
small piece of pemmican repeatedly asked my permission 
before he would eat it." 

Through all these years, if we except the noble devo- 
tion of the Moravian missionaries on the northeast of 
Canada and the splendid Christianity of such men as 
Bishop Bompas who sought them from the south, no 
one visited the Eskimo from the outside with the purpose 
of doing him good, but rather with the idea of exploit- 
ing him. Yet, from the days of Sir John Franklin and 
Sir Alexander Mackenzie to the recent voyage of Amund- 
sen, the spontaneous tribute of every man who has met 
them, talked with them, and received their hospitality is 
the same. The Eskimo is generous, and his word is worth 
its full face value. What we have done for the Eskimo is 
a minus quantity; what he has done for us is to point 
a splendid moral of integrity, manliness, and intrepid 
courage. 

Indians beg and boast, the Eskimo does neither. With 
no formulated religion or set creed, he has a code of ethics 

223 



THE NEW NORTH 

which forbids him to turn the necessity of another to his 
own advantage. Amundsen's farewell to his Eskimo 
friends sets the thoughtful of us thinking, "Goodbye, my 
dear, dear friends. My best wish for you is that civilisa- 
tion may never reach you." 

The trite saying is that the Loucheux Indians forced 
the Eskimo north, "keeping them with patient faces turned 
toward the Pole." But the Eskimo has a better country 
than the Loucheux has, for it is less rigorous and it pro- 
duces more food stuffs. The Loucheux at Fort Macpher- 
son knows what it is to experience a temperature of 60 
below Fahr., while at the coast it doesn't drop below 55. 

The Eskimo has two fields in which to hunt food, — the 
land and the sea, with fish the great staple ; and both fresh 
and salt-water fish are his, that in the mouths of the great 
rivers being better than what the Loucheux gets higher 
up. If the Eskimo wrote copy-book lines, the most insist- 
ent one would be, "Lose your matches, throw away your 
guns, but hang on to your fish-net." 

Through the years there was bad blood and mutual dis- 
trust between Eskimo and Loucheux. The last pitched 
battle occurred in the 6o's, when of the contestants only 
two Loucheux escaped and not one Eskimo was killed. 
The Hudson's Bay Company officer at the close of the 
fight called together the relatives of the slain Loucheux, 
upon whom rested the duty of revenge, and out of The 
Company's stores paid in trade-goods the blood-price of the 
slain. Since then both peoples have traded at Forts Mac- 
pherson and Arctic Red River, maintaining a sort of 
armed peace, but with no deeds of violence. The Louch- 
eux Indian, his wives, his babies, and his slab-sided dogs 

224 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

suffer from starvation almost every winter. In the whole 
history of the Eskimo there is not an authenticated story 
of one of this people having starved to death. Once more 
we protest against misapplied sympathy. However it may 
have been in the past, the Eskimo stays on the coast to-day 
because it is to him "God's country" and not because any 
hostile Loucheux sends him there. 

For the past twenty years the men on the American 
ships have employed the Eskimo to aid them in the whaling 
industry, picking up different bands all the way from Ber- 
ing Sea eastward as they sail in from the Pacific, and 
depositing each group at their individual beaches as the 
ships take out their rich spoils of baleen and oil at the 
close of the season. The Eskimo has proven a valued 
aid to this industry; how has the intrusion of the whites 
into his ancestral sea-domain affected the Eskimo? 

Within two decades the European population of this 
Mackenzie River delta region has been cut down from 
two thousand to probably one-fourth of that number. The 
causes? White men's diseases: scarlet fever, consump- 
tion, measles, syphilis must account for most of the star- 
tling decrease. Scarletina has killed many, consumption 
some, though consumption is not nearly so fatal with the 
Eskimo as with the Indian, measles perhaps more than all. 
Measles among the Eskimo is more fatal than the Bubonic 
plague among Europeans. 

What other changes is the yearly presence of American 
whalers among them making in Eskimo evolution ? Who 
shall say? It is so easy to be dogmatic, so hard to be just. 
This intrusion of the whites has changed the whole horizon 
here; we can scarcely call it the coming of civilisation, 

225 



THE NEW NORTH 

but call it rather the coming of commerce. The whalers 
have taught palates once satisfied with rotten fish and blub- 
ber to want coffee and tea and molasses, yeast-bread, 
whiskey, and canned peaches. To the credit side of the 
account, we must fairly state that the ships have brought 
the Eskimo whale-boats, good guns, and ammunition. 

The Eskimo population of the Mackenzie delta is be- 
coming mixed by marriages between the different tribes 
brought together to work on the whaling-ships. Each of 
these intertribal alliances brings about its changed culture 
characteristics. But as a more far-reaching result of the 
coming of the whalers there is springing up on the edge 
of the Arctic a unique colony of half-caste Eskimo children, 
having Eskimo mothers, and, for "floating fathers," mark- 
ing their escutcheon with every nationality under the sun, 
— American, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Italian, Portu- 
guese, Lascar. This state of things startles one, as all 
miscegenation does, and this particular European-Eskimo 
alliance is different from all others. In the hinterland of 
the Arctic, when a Frenchman or a Scot took a dusky 
bride from the tepee of Cree or Chipewyan it was with 
an idea of making the marriage a permanent one. There 
is no intent on the part of the whalers to take their Eskimo 
"wives" outside with them, nor does the wife so-called look 
for this. One or two cases are on record where the half- 
breed child has been taken "outside" by his father to school, 
and through the years perhaps six or eight half-Eskimo 
kiddies have percolated the interior waterways south to 
some mission-school, Anglican or Roman. As a rule, the 
marriage-contract is "good for this season only," and the 
wife and children bid their quondam husband and father 

226 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

farewell, smiling at him with neither animosity nor re- 
proach as the boats go out. 

What is then the ice-widow's condition? Is she an out- 
cast among her people? No, you must remember that 
neither the matrimonial standard of Pail-Mall nor Wash- 
ington, D. C, obtains here. The trade-ticker of the erst- 
while wife of the whaler ticks skyward in the hymeneal 
Lloyd's; she is much sought of her own people. Has she 
not gained in both kudos and capital? The knowledge 
which she must have acquired from the white man of whal- 
ers' ways of trading is supposed to be of monetary use to 
her second lord. Moreover, the tent, utensils, and cooking- 
kit which she shared with her spouse from the ships makes 
a substantial dower when she again essays Hymen's lot- 
tery. 

Eskimo women are neither petulant nor morose. With 
the men they share that calm-bearing of distinction, com- 
bined with the spontaneity of a child which makes such a 
rare and winning mixture. In moving among the half- 
caste Eskimo children up here on the edge of things, fair- 
ness forces us to admit that neither in stature nor physique 
do they fall below the standard of the thorough-bred na- 
tives. About the morals, the ethical, or mental standards, 
we venture no comparison, for heredity plays such strange 
tricks. The whole condition is formative, for the blending 
of races has been going on scarcely long enough for one 
to see and tabulate results. The influence of the mother 
will be longer applied and its results more lasting than 
that of the evanescent father, and in this is their hope. 
For years we have been repeating the trite, "The sins of 
the father are visited upon the children to the third and 

227 



THE NEW NORTH 

fourth generation;" it remained for Charles Dickens to 
ask, in his own inimitable way, if the virtues of the moth- 
ers do not occasionally descend in direct line. 

We respect the Eskimo for many things : for his physi- 
cal courage as he approaches the bear in single combat, 
for his uncomplaining endurance of hardships, for his 
unceasing industry, the cleverness of his handicraft, his 
unsullied integrity, sunny good-humour, and simple dig- 
nity. But, most of all, he claims my respect for the way 
he brings up his children. "A babe in the house is a well- 
spring of pleasure," is a pretty theory, but Charles Lamb 
reminds us that each child must stand on his own footing 
as an individual, and be liked or disliked accordingly. In 
the igloo and the tupik the child has his own accorded 
place and moves in and out of the home and about his occu- 
pations with that hard-to-describe air of assuredness that 
so distinguishes his father and mother. 

The Eskimo child accepts himself as the equal of any 
created thing, but there is nothing blatant about him, nor 
is his independence obtrusive. He is born hardy, and 
lives hardy, trudging along on the march in his place 
beside the grown-ups. Each Eskimo man and woman is 
an independent entity, free to go where he pleases. There 
is no law, no tribunal, no power to limit or command him, 
but instinctively he observes the rule of doing as he would 
be done by, and he teaches his child the same Golden Rule. 
A boy or girl is never considered an encumbrance and is 
readily even eagerly adopted if his own parents die. The 
Eskimo child is ushered into the earthly arena with no 
nourish of trumpets, for his coming is but an incident of 
the journey if Fate has decreed that he should be born 

228 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

when the family is on the march. The hour's stop for 
the mid-day meal often sees a new little valiant soldier 
added to the ranks of the clan and starting his traverse 
of Arctic trails. If the baby is born while the family is 
in camp, mother and babe separate themselves from the 
rest of the family for a month, no one being allowed to 
look at, much less fuss over, the little stranger. 

Naming an Eskimo baby is fraught with significance. 
If the last grown man who died in the band was one 
revered, one whose footsteps are worthy to be followed, 
the name of the departed clansman is given to the newborn 
child. The belief is that the spirit of the dead man hovers 
around the community and immediately upon the birth of 
the child takes possession, a re-incarnation in the baby- 
body. Withdrawing itself in twelve months' time, the 
spirit of the ghostly god-father lingers by to influence the 
character and destiny of the growing child. 

We trace a well-known nursery rhyme to the igloo of 
the Eskimo. The summer-born baby dispenses with cloth- 
ing for the first six months of its earthly pilgrimage, 
cuddling its little bare body close to its mother's back 
under her artikki, or upper garment, which has been made 
voluminous to accommodate him. But the husky babe 
who comes when King Wenceslaus looks out on the Feast 
of Stephen has his limbs popped into a bag of feathers be- 
fore his mother takes him pick-a-back, or else he is wrapped 
in a robe of rabbit-skin. So we see that it was an Eskimo 
mother who first crooned in love and literalness, 

"By-o, Baby Bunting - , 
Daddy's gone a-hunting, 
To get a little rabbit-skin, 
To wrap his Baby Bunting in." 
229 



THE NEW NORTH 

Mother-love is a platform upon which even ancestral 
enemies can meet. While I sat cross-legged (and, like 
cotton, absorbent) last summer enjoying the hospitality 
of the Oo-vai-oo-aks, to us entered a beautiful-faced Lou- 
cheux Indian mother with a pair of twins pendant, — rol- 
licking chaps. The younger Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak dropped 
on the floor her lord's boot which she had been dutifully 
biting into shape and jumped up to greet her visitor. 
There was no mistaking that smile of hospitality. Snatch- 
ing from the visitor one of her baby boys, the young hostess 
kissed and cried out to it with an abandon of maternal 
joy, the culminating point of which was feeding it from 
her own breast. Thus, in one instance at least, has the 
ancient feud of Loucheux and Eskimo died. 

A baby Eskimo is nursed until it is two years old or 
older, and learns to smoke and to walk about the same time. 
The family pipe is laid upon the couch, and papa, mamma, 
and the children take a solacing whiff as the spirit moves 
them. 1 nese pipes are identical with those used by the 
Chinese, and hold but half a thimbleful of tobacco, the 
smoke being inhaled and swallowed with dreamy joy. 

The hardihood of Eskimo children is scarcely believable. 
It is not unusual for children of six years to trudge uncom- 
plainingly for twenty-five miles by the side of their elders; 
and we came to know a little seven-year old chap who was 
quite a duck-hunter, and who went out every day alone 
and seldom came back without at least two brace. At 
eleven years, with his watertight boots, spear in hand, and 
coil of line on his back, he takes up the Innuit man's 
burden, and does it with an air both determined and 
debonair. If you ask a mother if she does not think this 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

a somewhat tender age for her boy to essay to keep up 
with the men on the hunt, she merely smiles as she sews 
her waterproof seam, and says, "The First Innuits [Es- 
kimo] did so." 

These fur-clad philosophers are perhaps seen at their 
best in their play, for there is always harmony in the 
crystal nursery of the North, as these little people have 
no bad names nor threatening terms in their vocabulary 
Yet the play is often very rough, and your Eskimo lad is 
no molly-coddle. The writer watched five small boys play- 
ing football with a walrus-bladder among the roses on the 
edge of the Arctic. The game was neither Rugby nor 
"Soccer," but there seemed to be a good deal of tackling 
in it. Four of them got the fifth one, who hugged the 
ball, down, and were sitting on him and digging their 
skin boots into the soft parts of his anatomy. "You're 
angry, now," said a Major of the Royal Northwest 
Mounted Police who was looking on. "No, sir," said the 
under dog, with difficulty protruding his head, "I never 
get mad when I play." 

The boys have a sort of duel which they have copied 
from their elders. It is customary for the grown men 
of the tribe to settle accumulated difficulties by standing a 
selected number of contestants, say four on each side, 
facing each other. Each man is allowed to strike his 
adversary a number of blows, the recipient of the buffeting 
being bound by the laws of the game to stand quiescent 
and take what is coming to him. Then striker and strikee 
change places and reverse the courtesy. All sorts of feel- 
ings come into your throat to choke you, as you watch a 
row of "heathen" Eskimo lads carry out an ungentle joust 

231 



THE NEW NORTH 

of this kind, for the blows are no child's play. Think of 
what this self-inflicted discipline means in the way of char- 
acter-building, then think of the ignoble tactics that obtain 
on some of our race-courses, baseball diamonds, and 
"sport" carnivals, and then do some more thinking. A 
line of Tennyson came persistently to my mind last sum- 




■ 




Farthest North Foothall 

mer as I walked in and out among the camps of the Eskimo, 
— "Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control." 

What of the little girls? They have dolls made of 
reindeer skins, rude imitations of their elders. And they 
play "house," and "ladies," and "visiting," just as their 
cousins do on every shore of the Seven Seas ; but no little 
Eskimo girl has ever yet had the pleasure of dressing up 
in her mother's long dresses. 

232 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 

When the ptarmigan gets dark in feather and the sun 
begins to return in spring after the long six months' night, 
it is the pleased prerogative of the children to blow out 
the lamp in the snow-house. All the time that the sun 
is travelling south, clever combinations of cat's-cradle are 




Two Spectators at the Game 

played by the mothers and the children to entangle the 
sun in the meshes and so prevent its being entirely lost 
by continuing south and south and forgetting entirely to 
turn back to the land of the anxiously-waiting Eskimo. 
The boys, by playing a cup-and-ball game, help, too, to 
hasten its return. When the sun forgets you for six 
months, you become fearful lest you have lost his loving 
17 233 



THE NEW NORTH 

care forever. The spring is an anxious time in more 
ways than one, for if there is any suffering from hunger 
it is felt now, when the winter supplies are finished and 
the new hunts not yet begun. "I'll eat my hat" is an 
empty threat in the south, but many an Eskimo kiddie has 
satisfied the gnawing pains of spring hunger by chewing 
his little skin boots. 

At the Mackenzie delta last year, Roxi the Eskimo came 
in and told me this sad story. Six weeks before, a party 
of Eskimo had left Baillie Island with dogs for Kopuk. 
On their way they found a dead whale and cooked and 
ate of it; the next day they found another and again in- 
dulged. After travelling twenty-five miles, the whole 
party was taken violently ill, and six adults and two chil- 
dren died, leaving only one little girl alive. There for 
three days and four nights she remained, alone in the camp 
of the dead, until by the merest chance a young Eskimo, 
attending his line of traps from Toker Point, stumbled 
into the silent camp. 

One can faintly glimpse at, but must utterly fail to grasp, 
what that little girlie suffered mentally. We picture her 
sleeping, sobbing, waiting in that snow-hut in the silences, 
surrounded by the still bodies of every one she loved on 
earth. The sequel of the story is as sad as its first chapter. 
The band of Eskimo to which the rescuer belonged went 
in their turn and ate of this stranded whale, with the result 
that A-von-tul and Ita-chi-uk, two youths of twenty or 
twenty-one, died, too, and with them a little four-year-old 
girl. The drift whale must have been poisoned either by 
ptomaine or by the remnants of the highly compressed 
tonite, the explosive used by the whale-hunters. 

234 



ARCTIC RED RIVER AND ITS ESKIMO 



As we visit in friendly wise the Eskimo and their chil- 
dren, a feeling of loving admiration and appreciation 
tightens round our hearts. We had never heard a harsh 
word bestowed upon a child, no impatient or angry admo- 




An Eskimo Exhibit 

A — Eskimo woman's head-dress of reindeer skin. 

B — Skin of the baby seal, its shimmering whiteness used by the missionaries to typify 

the Lamb of God, the word " Lamb " having no meaning to an Eskimo. 
C — Ornamental skin mat, the work of an Eskimo woman. 
D — Quiver of arrows used by Eskimo boys. 
E — Model of Eskimo paddle. 

F — Skin model of the Oomiak or Eskimo woman's boat. 
G and H — Eskimo pipes of true Oriental type, the bowl holding only half a thimbleful of 

tobacco. 



nition. If a boy gives way to bursts of temper, and this 
is rare, he is gently taken to task, reproved, and reasoned 
with after the fit of passion is over. Certainly, without 
churches or teachers or schools, with no educational jour- 
nals, and no Conventions of Teachers, with their wise 

2 35 



THE NEW NORTH 

papers on the training of ''the child," the Eskimo children 
we saw were better behaved, more independent, gentler, 
and in the literal sense of the word, more truly "educated" 
than many of our children are. Instinctively you feel that 
here are boys and girls being trained admirably for the 
duties of life, a life that must be lived out in stern condi- 
tions. 

Perchance, floating down on the Aurora, has come to 
the Eskimo a glint of the truth that has passed us by, the 
truth that God's own plan is the family plan, that there are 
life lessons to learn which, by the very nature of things, 
the parents alone can impart. Teaching children in the 
mass has its advantages, but it is the family after all and 
not the fifty children in a school grade which forms the 
unit of national greatness. 



CHAPTER XIII 

FORT MACPHERSON FOLK 

"I have drunk the Sea's good wine, 
Was ever step so light as mine, 
Was ever heart so gay? 

O, thanks to thee, great Mother, thanks to thee, 
For this old joy renewed, 
For tightened sinew and clear blood imbued 
With sunlight and with sea." 

— A Pagan Hymn. 

On July 14th, shortly after we leave Arctic Red River, 
an open scow passes us, floating northward with the 
stream. It comes in close to the steamer, and we look 
down and see that every one of its-seven occupants is sound 
asleep. In traversing the Mackenzie, there is no danger 
of running into ferry-boats or river-locks, if you strike the 
soft alluvial banks here the current will soon free you and 
on you go. The voyagers in the scow may sleep in peace. 

At Point Separation, 6j° $j' N., the Mackenzie delta 
begins. Where the east and west branches diverge, the 
width of the river is fifty miles, the channel becoming one 
maze of islands, battures, and half-hidden sand-bars. The 
archipelago at the Arctic edge extends a full hundred miles 
east and west. 

The two lob-sticks at Point Separation are full of his- 
toric interest. It was here, on the evening of July 3rd, 
1826, that Sir John Franklin and Dr. Richardson parted, 

237 



THE NEW NORTH 

Franklin to trend west and Richardson east, in their mis- 
sion of Arctic coastal exploration. Twenty-two years 
later, Richardson, this time concerned with the Plover Re- 
lief Expedition of the lost Franklin, again visited Point 
Separation. Fie records, 

"July 30th, 1848, Point Separation. In compliance with my 
instructions, a case of pemmican was buried at this place. We dug 
a pit at a distance of ten feet from the best grown tree on the 
Point, and placed in it, along with the pemmican, a bottle contain- 
ing a memorandum of the Expedition, and such information re- 
specting the Company's post as I judged would be useful to the 
boat party of the Plover should they reach this river. The lower 
branches of the tree were lopped off, a part of its trunk denuded 
of bark, and a broad arrow painted thereon with red paint. In 
performing these duties at this place, I could not but recall to 
mind the evening of July 3rd, 1826, passed on the very same 
spot with Sir John Franklin. We were then full of joyous antic- 
ipation." 

As we look at these enduring lobsticks, we recollect that 
Commander Pullen, with two boats from the Plover in 
1849, visited the depot and found the precious pemmican. 
We leave the Mackenzie proper for the present and enter 
the easternmost channel of its farthest north tributary, the 
Peel, and follow this considerable stream thirty-three miles 
to Fort Macpherson, the most northerly post of the Hud- 
son's Bay Company. 

Fort Macpherson has a striking site. To the east, 
spreads a rolling wooded plain of alluvial origin, contain- 
ing thousands of lakes. The west aspect gives us an unin- 
terrupted view of the wooded valley of the Peel, backed by 
a heathery slope with the northern Rockies on the far hori- 
zon. Due north, upstarts a peak of the Rockies known 

238 



FORT MACPHERSON FOLL 



_v 



locally as Black Mountain — a dark barren spur two thou- 
sand feet in height. A winter trail from Macpherson to 




Constable Walker and Sergeant Fitzgerald in Eskimo Togs 



Arctic Red River cuts no fewer than thirty-three small 
lakes. 

On the beach to meet us are Mounted Police and Eskimo 
from Herschel Island, Church of England missionaries, 

2 39 



THE NEW NORTH 

traders of the H. B. Co., and Loucheux Indians. But here, 
as at Arctic Red River, it is that Polar gentleman the Es- 
kimo who claims our attention. Let Sergeant Fitzgerald, 
R.N.W.M.P., stationed at Herschel Island, speak for the 
Kogmollyc and Nunatalmute Eskimo. In his departmen- 
tal report this officer states, "I have found these natives 
honest all the time I have been at Herschel Island. I never 
heard of a case of stealing among them." He has been 
there five years. Up here on the Arctic the bare word of 
an Eskimo is accepted of all men. If he states to an H. B. 
Co. factor that he has an order from a whaling captain to 
get certain goods for himself, that unwritten order is hon- 
oured though it may date back two or even three years, 
whereas an order presented by a white man must be in 
writing and certified. 

Why should I enter the lists and take up icy spear for 
my Eskimo fellow British subject? Because he is so very 
worth while. Because through the years the world has 
conspired to libel him. Because within a decade or two 
he will have passed utterly off the map. And because it 
is so very much pleasanter to write appreciations than 
epitaphs. This man wins you at once by his frank direct- 
ness; his bearing is that of a fearless child. The Indian, 
like Ossian's hero, scorns to tell his name, and on occasion 
will dodge the camera, but the Eskimo likes to be photo- 
graphed. Young and old, they press to our side like 
friendly boys and girls round a "chummy" teacher, volun- 
teering information of age, sex, and previous condition, 
with all sorts of covetable bits of intimate family history. 
You love the Eskimo because he is kind to his dogs and 
gentle to little children. His entire willingness to take you 

240 



FORT MACPHERSON FOLI 



i\ 



on credit is contagious, trust begets trust even in walrus 
latitudes. 

The Mackenzie River Eskimo is a clever chap. With 
no school-teacher, no school, no modern appliances, he does 
many things and does each admirably. He is a hunter by 
land and sea, a fearless traveller, a furrier, a fisherman, a 




Two Wise Ones 



carver, a metal-smith, and he takes in every task the pride 
of a master mechanic, — "the gods see everywhere." The 
duties of the man and the woman are well-defined. The 
head of the Kogmollyc household is the blood-and-flesh- 
winner, the navigator of the kayak, the driver of dogs. It 
is he who builds the houses on the march, and when occa- 
sion requires he does not consider it infra dig. to get the 

241 



THE NEW NORTH 

breakfast or mind the baby. The wife dresses the skins, 
prepares the food, makes all the clothing, and the lord of 
the igloo demands from her the same perfect work that he 
turns out himself. 




\ 



« i 



A Nunatalmute Eskimo Family 

When an Eskimo wife has finished making her spouse 
a pair of waterproof boots, she hands them to him, and he 
blows them up. If there is one little pin-hole and the air 
oozes out, he throws the boots back to her, and she may 

242 



FORT MACPHERSON FOLK 

take up the pedal gauntlet in one of two ways. Either she 
must meekly start to make a new pair of boots without 
murmuring a word, or leave it open to him to take to his 
bosom another conjugal bootmaker. We noticed with in- 
terest in watching this little tableau that there was no re- 
crimination. No word was spoken on either side, the ex- 
acting husband contenting himself with blowing up the 
boots and not the wife. 

With uncanny fascination we watched one old woman 
curry a sealskin. Her tongue was kept busy cleaning the 
scraper, while her mouth was a repository for the scrap- 
ings, which went first there, then to a wooden dish, then to 
the waiting circle of pop-eyed dogs. The whole perform- 
ance was executed with a precision of movement that held 
us fascinated. 

If a white woman were to be shipwrecked and thrown 
upon an Eskimo foreshore and presenting herself at a 
Flusky employment bureau, many surprises would await 
her. Instead of asking for references from her last em- 
ployer, the genial proprietor would first ask to inspect her 
teeth. In prosecuting female Eskimo handicraft your 
teeth are as important a factor as your hands. The re- 
porter for the funeral column of an Eskimo daily, writing 
the obituary of a good wife, instead of speaking of the tired 
hands seamed by labor for her husband and little ones, 
would call pathetic attention to, "the tired and patient teeth 
worn to their sockets by the yearly chewing for the house- 
hold." A young wife's cobbling duty does not end with 
making for her mate boots that shall be utterly waterproof, 
but each morning she must arise before the seagull and 
chew these into shape. You see, after the boots are wet 

243 



THE NEW NORTH 

each day they get as stiff as boards, then they must be 
lubricated with oil and chewed into shape. We watched 
Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Younger at this wifely duty. Tak- 
ing the big boot up in her well-shaped hands, incisively, 
quarter-inch by quarter-inch, the white teeth made their 
way round the borderland between upper and sole, the in- 
dentations looking like the crisped edges on the rims of 
the pies your mother used to make. Solomon's eulogy of 
Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak corrected to the latitude of yo° North 
would read, "She seeketh fish and the liver of seals and 
worketh willingly with her hands ; she riseth also while it 
is yet night and cheweth the boots of her household." 

Every bit of Eskimo skin-clothing is as soft and pliable 
as a kid glove. The effect is not produced without patient 
labor, and again the teeth of the woman are brought into 
requisition. The raw sealskins or hides of the reindeer 
and bear are staked out in the sun with the skin-side up 
and dried thoroughly. Before this stiff material can be 
worked up into garments it must be made pliable, and this 
is done by systematically chewing the fibres, a slow and 
painstaking task. Creasing the hide along its whole 
length, the women take it in their hands and chew their 
way along the bend from one end of the skin to the other, 
working their way back along the next half-inch line. 
Watching them, one is reminded of the ploughman driv- 
ing his team afield up one furrow and down the other. 

It falls to the lot of the woman, too, to do her share of 
boat-making. The men deftly fashion the frames of kayak 
and oomiak, using in their construction not a single nail or 
piece of iron, but fastening the wood together by pegs and 
thongs of skin. Then the women come on the scene. 

244 



FORT MACPHERSON FOLK 

measure the frame, and sew green hides of the proper 
shape to fit, making wonderful overlapping seams that are 
absolutely watertight. As it is necessary to put the skin 
covering on while the hides are raw, the whole job has to 
be completed at one sitting. So a bee is held of the women 
of the communal camp. 

Where did the Eskimo get his versatile ability? Only 
the walrus knows. The whalers have inducted the Eskimo 
into the art of making cribbage-boards. They use for 



Cribbage-boards of Walrus Tusks 

The scenes etched in the larger represent the events of one year of the carver. 

each board a complete tusk of walrus-ivory, covering the 
whole with a wealth of descriptive carvings illustrative of 
all that comes into the yearly round of an Eskimo's life, — 
ice-fishing, bear-hunting, walrus-sticking. So far as we 
could find out, the Husky's connection with cribbage ceased 
with his making these edition de luxe boards. He seemed 
himself to have gathered no inkling of the fine points of 
that game which one instinctively associates with Dick 
Swiveller as tutor and as pupil the little Marchioness, "that 
very extraordinary person, surrounded by mysteries, ig- 

245 



THE NEW NORTH 

norant of the taste of beer, and taking a limited view of 
society through the key-holes of doors." In the world 
outside, far from igloos and ice-floes, where people gather 
round cheery Christmas fires with "one for his nob," "two 
for his heels," and "a double run of three," these ivory crib- 
boards are sold for from seventy-five to one hundred dol- 
lars each. We have two among our most treasured tro- 
phies, and with them an ivory ring beautifully formed 
which we saw made. Set in the ring is a blue stone of 
irregular shape which was fitted into its ivory niche with 
a nicety of workmanship that few jewellers could attain. 
I had fashioned for me also a gavel in the shape of a sleep- 
ing seal, made of fossil ivory from the Little Diomedes. 
The contrast of the weathered brown of the outside of the 
ivory with the pure white of the inner layers, when worked 
up into a carved design, gives the effect of cameo and in- 
taglio combined. 

We tasted many new Eskimo dishes. When, on our re- 
turn, we confessed that the brain of the seal served here is 
a delicious dish, we ran against the sensibilities of refined 
natures. But why is it cruder to enjoy seal's brains a la 
vinaigrette, than to tickle our taste with brains of the 
frolicking calf ? The seal furnished a more equivocal din- 
ner than this, nothing less than entrails au naturel, which 
our hostess draws through her fingers yard by yard in pure 
anticipative delight, each guest being presented with two 
or three feet of the ribbon-like piece de resistance. The 
scene that jumps to our memory as we watch this feast of 
fat things is connected with food-manipulations in Chi- 
cago. It was down at Armour's in the stockyards that we 
had seen Polacks and Scandinavian girls preparing in the 

246 



FORT MACPHERSON FOLK 

succulent sausage a comestible that bore strange family 
semblance to that which our friends are now eating before 
us, this linked sweetness long drawn out. 

Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson's Bay Company here, 
gives us much information regarding these people who for 
thirty-seven consecutive years have traded with him. The 
Kogmollycs have been here "from the beginning," the Nu- 







Useful Articles Made by the Eskimo 



A — Eskimo soapstone lamp which burns seal-oil. The wick is of reindeer moss. 

B — Eskimo knife of Stone Age. 

C — Its modern successor, fashioned from part of a steel saw, with handle of ivory. 

This is the knife used by the women; note how the old shape is retained. 
D — Eskimo Tarn O'Shanter. The band is of loonskins, the cap proper being carefully 

constructed from swans' feet. This admirably shows the cleverness of the Eskimo 

in adapting natural forms to economic use, each foot of the swan being a true 

sector of a circle. 
E — Old-time stone hatchet. 

F and G — Knives filed from saw-blades, with bone handles. 
H — Mortar for pulverising tobacco into snuff. 
I — Needle set in a wood handle, and by rapid rotary motion used to pierce ivory. 

natalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out 
of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, 
Alaska, by a scarcity of game. The two tribes live in 
peace and intermarry. The aged among them are re- 
spected. Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed from 
the drama. Supposed incurables commit suicide and in 

247 



THE NEW NORTH 

that act reach immediately a hot underground heaven. 

Nature to these Eskimo is especially benign. The junc- 
tion of the Mackenzie and the Peel is covered with a forest 
of spruce, and even to the ocean-lip we trace foot-prints of 
moose and black bear. In the delta are cross, red, and 
silver foxes, mink and marten, with lynx and rabbits ac- 
cording to the fortunes of war. The Eskimo declare that, 
east of Cape Parry, bears are so numerous that from ten 
to twenty are seen at one time from a high hilltop. 

The Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs, the man with 
the best stories and the most inimitable way of telling them, 
is Roxi. It was Roxi who gave us the love story of his 
cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar. This young man 
wooed a maid. The girl's father had no very good opin- 
ion of the lad's hunting ability and was obdurate. The 
lover determined to take destiny into his own hands. A 
ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that of the 
family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm 
a drift-log formed a temporary bridge. Lothario, one 
night, crossed the icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, 
seized her in her sJiin-ig-bee or sleeping-bag and lifted the 
dear burden over his back. In spite of struggles and muf- 
fled cries from within, he strode off with her to his side 
of the stream. The gulch safely crossed, he gaily kicked 
the log bridge into the gulf and bore his squirming treasure 
to his own igloo floor. He had left his seal-oil lamp burn- 
ing and now it was with an anticipative chuckle of joy 
that he untied the drawstring. We end the story where 
Roxi did, by telling that the figure which rolled out sput- 
tering from the shin-ig-bee was the w r ould-not-be father- 
in-law instead of the would-be bride! 

248 



« 



CHAPTER XIV 

MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

"Into this Universe, and Why not knowing 
Nor Whence, like Water willy-nilly flowing, 

And out of it, as Wind along the Waste, 
I know not W hither, willy-nilly blowing." 

— The Rubaiyat. 

The Midnight Sun ! The sun does not sink to the hori- 
zon, but pauses for a moment and rises again. Dawn and 
eventide are one. The manifestations of light ever since 
we left Athabasca Landing have been wonderful, uplifting. 
The supreme marvel of the Midnight Sun is not what we 
see but what we feel. Standing at this outpost of Britain's 
Empire, we give our imagination rein and see waking- 
worlds and cities of sleep. As this red sun rises from its 
horizon -dip, it is the first of the unnumbered sunrises 
which, as hour follows hour, will come to the continents. 
Longfellow says : 

"Think, every morning where the sun peeps through 
The dim, leaf-latticed windows of the grove, 
How jubilant the happy birds renew 
Their old, melodious madrigals of love ! 
And when you think of this, remember too 
'Tis always morning somewhere, and above 
The awakening continents, from shore to shore, 
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore." 

How do the people of Macpherson divide into day and 
is 249 



THE NEW NORTH 

night their largesse of light? By common consent four 
o'clock in the morning seems to be bedtime, and by four in 
the afternoon people are busying themselves with break- 
fast. In Polar Circles, do as the Polars do, is good advice, 
and we follow suit. Individuality is strongly marked at 
this metropolis on the Peel. Every one you meet is a 
mine of interest, and sharp contrasts present themselves. 
Mrs. Macdonald discusses fur and deer-meat with Jack 




Home of Mrs. Macdonald 

Johnson. He is a trapper who plays the game alone and 
who last year was reduced to killing his favourite dog for 
food. Current report credits him with having "killed his 
man in the Yukon." Mrs. Macdonald is a Loucheux 
woman who, at the age of fourteen or fifteen, married 
Archdeacon Macdonald of the English Church and for 
eight long years afterwards assisted him in his life work of 
translating the Gospels into the Loucheux language. She 
has come all the way from Winnipeg to the Arctic Circle 

250 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

to spend the summer visiting her people. We lose our 
hearts to her two sons, splendid fellows both. 

It is the Eskimo who brings both missionary and trader 
to Fort McPherson. Are these Eskimo, Christians ? Are 
they civilised? These are the questions that confront us 
when we speak of these Farthest North Canadians. It is 
an age of classification. You cannot find a flower nowa- 
days that some one has not tacked a Latin name to, and it 
goes by inverse ratio — the smaller the flower the longer 
the name. Every bird you hear sing, even though it stop 
but an hour to rest its tired pinion on its northern migra- 
tion, has an invisible label pinned under its coat. How 
can a man, a tribe, a people, hope to escape ? In the north- 
east of Canada the Eskimo is a disciple of the Moravian 
missionary. In Alaska, on the extreme northwest of the 
continent, the Greek Church takes him to its bosom. In 
between these two come the people we are studying. The 
Episcopalians through the years have made some sporadic 
attempt to influence these people, but so far as I know these 
Eskimo are not Episcopalians. What then must we call 
these splendid fellows so full of integrity and honour, 
whose every impulse is a generous one? Heathens? The 
question sets us thinking. 

The Century Dictionary defines a heathen as "Any ir- 
religious, rude, barbarous or unthinking class or person." 
This Eskimo is not "irreligious," for he has a well-formed 
conception of a Great Spirit and an Evil One, he looks to a 
place of reward or punishment after death, and he accedes 
to Kipling's line without ever having heard it, — "They that 
are good shall be happy." He is not "rude," but exceed- 
ingly courteous, with a delicacy of feeling that is rare in 

251 



THE NEW NORTH 

any latitude. "Unthinking" he certainly is not. Six 
months' darkness within the igloo gives him the same en- 
viable opportunity of thinking that the shoemaker has in 
his stall, and the whole world knows that the sequestrated 
cobbler is your true philosopher. 

There remains but the one ear-mark, "barbarous." The 
dictionary declares that barbarous means, "not classical or 
pure," "showing ignorance of arts and civilisation." On 
the first of these indictments our poor Kogmollyc must fall 
down, for he is not classical. And what man dare pro- 
nounce on the purity of another? Then we come to "arts" 
and "civilisation." In arts, this Eskimo can give cards 
and spades to every European who has visited him. The 
stumbling-block in this honest search for a tag to put on 
my people is the term "civilisation." One is reminded 
of the utterance of the Member of the British House of 
Commons: "Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is the 
other man's doxy." Was it not Lowell who at a Harvard 
anniversary said, "I am conscious that life has been trying 
to civilise me for now seventy years with what seems to 
me very inadequate results"? 

If "Christianity" with the Eskimo means taking him 
into the white man's church, and "civilising" means bring- 
ing him into close contact with white men's lives, then he 
has not yet attained the first, and has but little to thank 
the second for. Two years ago eighty of these people in 
one tribe died of measles, a white man's disease. A stray 
chaplain wandered into an encampment of Eskimo, finding 
his way from a whaling ship. He told the people of 
Heaven, its golden streets, pearly gates, and harp-songs, 
and it meant nothing to these children of frost. They were 

252 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

not interested. Then he changed his theme, and spoke of 
Hell with its everlasting fires that needed no replenishing. 
"Where is it? Tell us, that we may go !" and little and big 
they clambered over him, eager for details. 

Prayer as presented by the white man is recognised as 
an incantation which should bring immediate and literal 
results. An enquiring scientist was seated one day with 
Oo-vai-oo-ak, the two fishing through adjacent air-holes 
in the ice. Calling across to the white man, Oo-vai-oo-ak 
said, "How is it, brother, have you any fish?" 

"No," replied the man of letters, "I have taken noth- 
ing." 

"Have you spoken to God this morning?" asked the Es- 
kimo in a business-like tone. 

"No," said the wilted Walton. 

"Well, that's what's the matter," returned Oo-vai- 
oo-ak; "I always speak to God every morning before I go 
fishing. Once, when I went to Herschel Island, a mis- 
sionary told me what to say. It always works. I have 
many fish." 

The scientist, interested, queried, "And do you do the 
same when you go duck-hunting or goose-hunting or when 
you are after seal?" 

"No," eagerly responded Oo-vai-oo-ak, dropping his line 
and pressing close to the geologist, "Is there a prayer for 
duck, and for geese, and one for seal? The missionary 
never told me that. You teach it to me, eh? I like to 
make sure what to say to catch that fellow, — goose and 
seal." 

But, unfortunately for both, the university man did not 
have the charm. 

2 53 



THE NEW NORTH 

Broadly speaking, the Eskimo's theory of things, evolved 
from white spirits on the ice-floes or carried across in the 
age of the mastodon from sires and grandsires in Asia, 
does not differ materially from our own. There is a Good 
Spirit, called by different tribes Cood-la-pom-e-o, Kelliga- 
buk, or Sidne, who dwells high in the zenith, and to whom 
it is good to pray. There is an Evil Spirit, Atti, sym- 




Eskimo Kayaks at the Arctic Edge 

bolising cold and death. Their heaven is a warm under- 
world reached by entrances from the sea. Hell is a far, 
white, dreary plain. The Eskimo pray to Sidne; but it is 
wise to propitiate Atti or Tornarsuk, and in this last idea 
they but follow their Chinese or Tartar ancestors. In 
common with all nations, the Kogmollycs have a tradi- 
tion of the flood. Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the Elder said, 
"This world once covered with the sea." Asked why she 

254 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

thought so, she replied, "You have been down to the land 
of the caribou, eh ? Little smooth stones from the sea are 
there, and shells." 

The labrets or lip-ornaments, shirt-stud shaped effects 
worn in holes pierced in the cheek, strike us with interest. 
Is it too daring a conjecture to trace in these, which Eskimo 
men so sedulously cherish and resolutely refuse to talk 
about, a religious significance? The term "Kelligabuk" 
in a literal translation means "Mastodon." This animal, 
whose bones not infrequently are unearthed from ice-floes, 
has been for all time venerated as a god of the hunting 
grounds. Is it too fanciful to suggest that the labrets are 
a sort of peripatetic idol carried around on the person as an 
imitation of the tusks of this God-Mammoth? 

East and south of the Mackenzie delta the Eskimo tell 
of a Supreme Goddess, Nuliayok, who was once a coy 
maiden and refused to marry a mortal. Wooed by a gull, 
she accompanied the bird to an inland home, to find instead 
of her dreams of delight a nest of sticks and rotten fish 
on a high-hung ledge. Jostled by the other fulmars, or 
gulls, who tried to push her off the rocks, she sent for her 
father. In the night-time he came and sailed with her over 
the water in an oomiak. The deserted fulmar-bridegroom, 
taking a leaf out of Prospero's book, raised a storm. The 
father, to lighten the craft and propitiate the storm-spirit 
at the same time, threw the poor bride over-board, and 
cut off her fingers as she clung to the boat. As the four 
fingers dropped into the sea they changed respectively into 
beluga the white whale, nutchook the common seal, oog- 
zook the big seal, and ibyl the walrus. After thus giving 
origin to the four great sea-friends of the Innuit, the God- 

2 55 



THE NEW NORTH 

dess Nuliayok let go the boat and went to the world be- 
neath the sea, where she now lives in a whalebone house 
with a dog for husband. She cannot stand erect, but 
hunches over the ground, holding one foot under her as a 
baby does who has not yet learned to walk. 

It is to Nuliayok that the spirits of sea-animals go after 
staying three days by their dead bodies; and this is the 
reason why the Eskimo breaks the eyes of a killed seal. 
He does not want it to witness the indignity of seeing its 
own body denuded of its skin. This too is the raison d'etre 
of the ceremonies which every Eskimo punctiliously per- 
forms in connection with the animal he kills. Each ani- 
mal has a soul or spirit to be offended or placated; if 
pleased, the spirit of the dead animal communicates with 
its living kin, who in turn will deem it an honour to be killed 
by such considerate folk as the ceremonious Innuit. 
Round the igloo fire we heard another tradition of Nulia- 
yok. The Goddess of the Sea once gave birth to a litter 
of white and red puppies. These she put into two little 
water-tight baby-boots and set them floating before a north 
wind. The puppies landed on southern shores and be- 
came the white race and the red race, the Europeans and 
the Indians. The Innuit, of course, had lived from the 
beginning. 

We arrogate to ourselves the term of "white race," but 
if these Eskimo were to wash themselves daily (which they 
do not do yearly) they would be as white as we are. They 
have fleshy intelligent faces and eyes with more than a 
suggestion of the almond-slant of the Oriental. The idea 
occurs to us that the full appearance of the cheeks of the 
women is more likely to be caused by the exercise of chew- 

256 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

ing skins and boots than by an accumulation of fatty tissue. 
The men are distinguished by the thin, straggling growth 
of beard and moustache which adorns their Asiatic pro- 
genitors. The labrets of the men are offset by the long 
pendant earrings of the women, which are made from H. 
B. Co. beads and shells brought by Alaska Indians from 
the Pacific. It is only the women who here tattoo their 
faces, the three long stripes extending from lower lip to 
the chin. The men crop their hair in the style of the ton- 
sure of the monk. Neither man nor woman provides any 
head covering except the hood of the artikki or smock, 
which hood, fringed with waving hair of the carcajou or 
wolverine, hangs loosely at the back until called into re- 
quisition by a winter's storm or a summer's siege of mos- 
quitoes. 

Eskimo clothing is much lighter in weight than it seems, 
and this is one reason why the Eskimo attaches of every 
Arctic expedition have moved around with less exhaustion 
than their European or American leaders. A well-made 
Eskimo outfit of inner and outer suits, with mittens, socks, 
and boots, weighs about thirteen pounds, while one im- 
ported fur coat of European deerskin will alone weigh more 
than that. 

A custom noted at the afternoon whale-meets and pink- 
teas might fittingly find way into the latitudes where nar- 
row toes and French heels obtain. Two ingenious young 
Kogmollyc belles had placed applique pockets mid-leg on 
their lower garments. When the walrus was passed 
round and conversation became general, the boots were 
slipped off quietly and one foot at a time was thrust for a 
resting spell into the pocket provided on the opposite 

257 



THE NEW NORTH 

trouser-leg. This act of easement was done deftly, and 
the neat action of instep boot- jack never lost its fascination 
for us. 




A Wise Man of the Dog-Ribs 

All the way from boundary-line to ice-barrier we had 
seen Indians tricked out in grotesque garments borrowed 
from the white man and used in combination with their 

258 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

own tribal covering of skins and furs. These sun-bonnets 
and shepherd's-plaid trousers, silk hats and red-flannel pet- 
ticoats, the trader had persuaded the child of the woods to 




A Study in Expression 

buy. The debonair Eskimo is a re-incarnation of the 
bastard brother of Aragon's Prince, and, leaning his furry 
back against the North Pole, says with him, "I smile at no 
man's jests, eat when I have stomach and wait for no man's 
pleasure, sleep when I am drowsy and tend on no man's 

2 59 



THE NEW NORTH 

business, laugh when I am merry and claw no man in his 
humour." 

You cannot induce an Eskimo to think he wants any- 
thing just because you have found that thing to your 
liking. There are two reasons for this. First, long ex- 
perience in the most rigorous climate which the human 
race inhabits has taught this man what garments are the 
most suitable for him in which to live and move and have 
his being. Second, although the Indian may ape the white 
man as a superior being from whom eleemosynary grub 
and gew-gaws may be wheedled, the Eskimo of the Mack- 
enzie delta considers himself to be the superior of every 
created being. The Eskimo knows what he wants; he is 
always sure of it, and there is no vacillating. When he 
comes into the H. B. Company's post to trade, skins are 
his currency, the pelts of the silver-fox his gold coinage. 
A good silver, or black-fox is worth here about one hun- 
dred dollars in barter. 

We saw a band of Nunatalmutes come into Fort Mac- 
pherson to do their summer shopping. They wanted Eng- 
lish breakfast tea, superior rifles and ammunition, and a 
special brand of tobacco. Failing any or all of these, it 
was in vain that the Factor displayed before them the 
wares of John Bull, Uncle Sam, or Johnny Canuck, or any 
seductive lure made in Germany. Ig-ly-o-bok and Nan-a- 
sook-tok bought what they found to their liking, took small 
change out of two silver-fox skins, and put the remaining 
six pelts back into the wooden box which formed at once 
their savings bank and letter of credit for the season to 
come. The hungry-eyed H. B. man confided to us that 
two of these coveted pelts had been thus exhibited to him 

260 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

and thus tucked back into the Eskimo sinking-fund for 
three successive seasons. 

As regards weapons, we found Eskimo hunters in the 
transition stage. The old-time spears, four feet long and 
tipped with ivory, are still in active service. The bows, 
with arrows finished in copper, flint, and bone, have been 
relegated largely to the boys, while Krag-Jorgensen, Lee- 
Enfield, and other high-power guns are bought from 
American whalers. The fish-hooks which I got in friendly 
barter are interesting to any one born with angling blood 
in his veins. Beautifully fashioned of ivory, copper, bone, 
and beads, the contrivance is a sinker, bait, and hook, all 
in one. The daily baskets procured with this lure incon- 
testably proves the Husky a judicious hooker. 

The Eskimo is a merger. Father Petitot shows us the 
close analogy between the Kogmollyc language and the 
tongues of eastern Asiatic tribes, ancient and modern. 
This Eskimo's speech, then, gives him a connection with 
the effete East (which is his west), while enamelled wash- 
basins, with here and there a corrugated wash-board, 
prove that slowly but surely Canadian culture is reaching 
him from the south. 

With two modifications, this Eskimo is invariably truth- 
ful. Like the Indians to the south of him, seeking to please 
you by answering a question in the way that you desire, 
he will at times tell you an untruth, for it seems to him 
discourteous to answer your question other than in the 
way which you anticipate. For instance, if you say to 
Roxi, "Wasn't that a grey goose we heard overhead?" 
Roxi will readily assent, though he well knows it to have 
been a mallard duck, but he would spare your ignorance. 

261 



THE NEW NORTH 

Again, it is Eskimo etiquette to belittle your own success 
in hunting and, in so doing, be not literally truthful. 
When we place this delightful trait alongside the fish- 
stories we are familiar with, who would seek to change the 
heathen ? 

Marriage with the Eskimo is not a ceremony, it is not 
even the taking of each other for better or for worse. It 
is an easy union entered upon and maintained so long as 
both parties are pleased. This arrangement has one mani- 
fest advantage, — Eskimo annals tell of no unhappy mar- 
riages. When unhappiness comes in at the door of the ig- 
loo, marriage flies out of the chimney. When a woman 
leaves her tentative husband, she takes herself and her ba- 
bies back to the paternal topik, and no odium attaches. 
As the marriage vows melt into the Arctic air, the quon- 
dam husband is expected, however, to play the game. 
Last winter a young Nunatalmute and his sorry spouse 
came to the parting of the ways. She asked him to take 
her back to Papa, but he said, "No. You may go to-mor- 
row if you wish, but I am ready to hunt in the opposite 
direction, and I hunt." Off to the chase he went and took 
the family auto, i. e., the sled and dogs, with him. The 
once-wife, travelling five days and six nights by the fitful 
light of the Aurora, found her way to her father, for the 
instinct of direction is unerring in these people; but the 
ex-bride's feet became badly frozen. Public opinion in 
this case was strongly roused against the husband and 
probably if there had been a tree handy he would have been 
lynched. This would have been the first lynching re- 
corded in Canada. The feeling of the Eskimo commu- 
nity was that, when the wife announced her intention of 

262 



MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN 

enforcing a divorce, the bounden duty of the husband was 
either to drive her himself in proper state to her father's 
door or to let her have the dogs. 

In their beliefs in the great powers of concentration and 
in re-incarnation we find traces in the Eskimo of those 
Theosophical ancestors of theirs far off on Asian shores. 
The ceremonies which approximate in time to our New 
Year's Day and Christmas show the importance they attach 
to concentrated thought. Early in the morning of what 
corresponds to our New Year's Day, two young men, one 
of them grotesquely dressed in women's garments, visit 
every igloo and blow out each seal-oil lamp. The lights 
are afterwards renewed from a freshly-kindled fire. The 
chief, asked the meaning of the ceremony, replied, "New 
light, new sun," showing his belief that the sun was yearly 
renewed at this time. This early morning visit from igloo 
to igloo reminds us of the "first-footing" of the Scottish 
village. The mummery of wearing the fantastic dress of 
the woman points back to the old Lord of Misrule. 

About the season of Christmas, a great meeting is held 
in the igloo, presided over by the Angekok or medicine- 
man, who entreats the invisible powers for good fortune, 
immunity from storms, and a plenitude of blubber for the 
ensuing year. This invocation is followed by a family 
feast. Next day the ceremonies are carried on out-of- 
doors, where all from oldest to youngest form a ring- 
around-a-rosy. In the centre of the circle is set a crock 
of water, while to the communal feast each person brings 
from his own hut a piece of meat, raw preferred. This 
meat is eaten in the solemn silence of a communion, each 
person thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, and wishing for 

263 



THE NEW NORTH 

good. The oldest member of the tribe, a white-haired man 
or tottering dame, takes up a sealskin cup, kept for this 
annual ceremony, dips up some of the water and drinks it, 
all the time thinking of Sidne, the Good Spirit, while the 
others close their eyes in reverent silence. 

Before passing the cup on to the rest of the company 
that they may drink, the old man or woman states aloud 
the date and place of his or her birth, as accurately as it 
can be remembered. The drinking and thinking ceremony 
is performed by all in succession, down to the last naked 
baby cuddling in its mother's artikki, the little child that 
cannot yet speak. The solemn rite is brought to a close 
by the tossing of presents across the ring from one to the 
other, the theory being that, as they generously deal with 
others, so Sidne will deal with them in the coming year. 
So up here on the edge of things, among our "uncivilised 
heathens," we have our Christmas presents and "Peace 
on earth, good will to men." 



CHAPTER XV 

MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 
"Man does not live by bread alone." 

Exigencies of life have caused the Mackenzie Eskimo to 
formulate on vital matters an unwritten law to which each 
gives assent. Succinctly stated, this system of Northland 
jurisprudence runs thus: — 

(a) Should a man, inadvertently or by malice afore- 
thought, kill another, the wife and children of the man so 
killed remain a burden on the murderer so long as he or 
they live. 

(b) A drift-log found is treasure-trove, and belongs to 
the tinder, zvho indicates possession by placing upon it a 
pipe, mitten, or personal trinket of some kind. Whalers, 
missionaries and Mounted Police are a unit in testifying 
that precious flotsam of this kind has remained four or five 
years in a land of wood-scarcity without being disturbed. 

(c) No one must eat seal and zvalrus on the same day. 
Thus a check is given to luxuriousness and the Eskimo is 
self-prevented from falling into the fate which overtook 
Rome. 

(d) All large animals killed are to be looked upon as 
common property of the tribe and not as a personal belong- 
ing of the man zvho kills them. Thus here, under the 
Northern Lights, do the Farthest North subjects of the 
Seventh Edward work out in deeds the dream of Sir 

19 265 



THE NEW NORTH 

Thomas More's crescent-isle of Utopia where men lived 
and worked as brothers, holding all things in common. 

The Eskimo realises that the pleasure of life is in pur- 
suit, not in acquisition. Where wants are many, joys are 
few ; the very austerity of his life has made a man of him. 
Laying up few treasures for the elements to corrupt, ac- 
cumulating no property except a little, a very little, of the 
kind designated by Wemmick as "portable," he, to better 
and saner effect than any man, decreases the denominator 
of his wants instead of increasing the numerator of his 
havings. Surrounded by the paleocrystic ice, the genial 
current of his soul has not been frozen by that ice. An 
Eskimo family accepts life with a smile and, in the faith 
of little children, goes on its way. 

An old Scot once prayed, "O Lord, send down to Thy 
worshippin' people at this time the savin' grace o' contin- 
uance." Only one man has less need to pray that prayer 
than the Scot himself, and that man is the Eskimo. The 
Indian eats and sleeps as his wife works, but while there 
is spear-head to fashion or net to mend, the clever hands 
of the Eskimo are never idle. Thrifty as a Scot, ingeni- 
ous as a Yankee, every bit of the little property that he 
has is well kept. You find around this igloo no broken 
sled-runner, untrustworthy fishing-gear, nor worn-out 
dog-harness. Civilisation has nothing to teach this man 
concerning clothing, house-building, or Arctic travel. In- 
deed, one may hazard the opinion that the ambitious ex- 
plorer from the outside, if he reach the Pole at all, will 
reach it along Eskimo avenues with this man as active 
ally and by adopting his methods of coping with Northern 
conditions. 

266 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

On account of the malignity of nature, it is rare that an 
Eskimo attains the three score and ten Scriptural years. 
Few, indeed, live beyond the age of fifty-five or sixty. If 
his life is short, it is happy. This pagan has grasped a 
great truth that his Christian brother often misses, the 
truth that happiness is not a luxury, but the highest of all 
virtues, a virtue filling the life where it originates and 
spreading over every life it touches. 

There is about this Mackenzie Eskimo a certain other- 
worldliness which we insistently feel but which is hard to 
describe, and to us his generosity is sometimes embar- 
rassing. At Peel River a band of Kogmollycs met us, car- 
rying on board pieces of their ivory-carving. One man 
exhibited a watch-chain containing fifteen links and a 
cross-bar, all carved from a single piece of ivory. He 
wanted thirty-five dollars or the equivalent of that for his 
work, saying that it represented the leisure hours of two 
months. The engineer tried to make him lower his price, 
but with a courteous smile he shook his head, and the 
carving was dropped back into artikki recesses. After- 
wards, with the air of a shy child, the clever carver came 
to me and offered me the chain as a gift. It was probably 
a difficulty of articulation rather than a desire to be scath- 
ing which induced this man subsequently to refer to the 
one who tried to beat down his price as "the cheap en- 
gineer." 

Surprised at the magnificent physique and unusual 
height of this little group, one of us began measuring the 
chest expansions, length of limbs, and width of shoulders 
of the men and women we were talking with, while the 
other of us jotted the figures down in a note-book. Many 

267 



THE NEW NORTH 

of the men were over six feet tall, and none that we meas- 
ured was under five feet nine inches. One young giant, 
Emmie-ray, was much interested in our researches. The 
whalers call him "Set-'em-Up," for his name bears the 
convivial translation, "Give us a drink." "You going to 
make better man, you get Outside — make him like Emmie- 
ray?" As Emmie-ray pursues the tenour of his Arctic 
way, hunting the walrus, standing, a frozen statue, with 
uplifted spear over the breathing-hole of the seal, to the 
end of the chapter he will think of himself as being used 
for a stimulating Delineator-pattern in the igloo of the 
white man. 

Forty years ago, when Bishop Bompas came across a 
band of these people, instead of being awed at the ap- 
pearance of a white man, they took him for a son of Cain ! 
Their tradition was that, in the early history of the world, 
an Eskimo murdered his brother and fled to the inhospita- 
ble parts of the earth. The bishop, coming to them from 
the unknown south, must be a direct descendant of the 
outlaw, with his hands red with a brother's blood. 

Circling the ocean-edge from Siberia, without doubt this 
people came originally from Asia, as the Chipewyans did 
before them and the Crees before that, the more newly 
arrived in each case pressing their predecessors farther 
away from the food-yielding ocean. The Anglo-Saxon 
estimates all habitable land by his ell-measure, fertility of 
the soil, its ability to yield turnips, potatoes, and flax, and 
forty-bushel wheat. The measure of desirability of range 
of northern tribes has another unit — blood, and flesh, and 
fish. Your Eskimo and Chipewyan and Cree cares not a 
potato-skin for your waving fields of grain, your apple- 

268 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

orchards and grape-vines. What he is after is blood and 
blubber and good dripping flesh; these his soul craves in 
the night season. These peoples who made their way into 
the continent by the open door at the north have come 
down through the years toward the habitat of the white 
man, not because they loved him, but because a stronger 
tribe has pushed them back from Arctic flesh-pots. 

At the Mackenzie mouth we enjoyed the companionship 
of that courteous Eskimo gentleman, Roxi, and heard 
the story of his last winter's larder, but not from his lips. 
At the beginning of the season Roxi had whale-meat and 
fresh walrus, and also flour that he had earned from the 
whalers. In a characteristic burst of generosity he gave 
the greater part of this to needy members of other tribes 
who had had poor hunts and who found themselves at the 
beginning of the Long Night with empty Mother Hub- 
bard cupboards. The Eskimo winter has many meal- 
times, and Roxi had but a poor idea of the higher mathe- 
matics. Long ere the darkness of the Great Night relaxed 
its overbearing blackness Roxi got very hungry, and he 
had no food. Life is dear, even on the edge of things. So 
into the silence Roxi crept and dug down through the ice 
and frozen sand to the skeleton of a stranded whale killed 
three years before. All the sustaining flesh had been eaten 
from it more than a year ago, but the dried tendons were 
still there. By chewing these assiduously and picking 
bones already bare, this generous soul kept life in his body. 
As I heard the story, the last words of the gallant Sidney 
dying in agony on Zutphen's field that another's thirst 
might be quenched came across the ocean from another age 
and a far land, "Thy necessity is greater than mine." 

269 



THE NEW NORTH 

Britain's heroes, men of the finest mould, manifest on the 
shores of many seas. 

Inherited tastes in foods, like inherited creeds, are 
mainly a matter of geography, or of history, or of both. 
An Englishman had preceded us to the Arctic, going in 
in 1907, and the story of his food discrimination still lives 
in tepee of the Cree and Eskimo topik. The North is full 
of rivers, the cold bottle is always at your disposal, and 
generally, if you are any shot at all, you can get the hot 
bird. But this son of a thousand earls, or of something 
else, wouldn't eat owl when owl was served, though he 
would eat crow. Now, eating crow is to most a distaste- 
ful task, and the guides questioned the Englishman regard- 
ing the gastronomic line he drew. "Aw !" replied he, "No 
fellow eats owl, you know. Never heard of the bweastly 
bird at home, but crow ought to go all right. The crow's 
a kind of rook, you know, and every fellow eats rook- 
pic" 

Having put the seal's body into his own body and then 
encasing his skin in the seal's, the cheery Eskimo strides 
the strand, a veritable compensation-pendulum. The seal 
is so much an integral part of this people that if a geologist 
were to freeze a typical Eskimo and saw him through to 
get a cross-section he would have in the concentric strata 
a hybrid of Husky and seal. Holding up his transverse 
section under the light of the Aurora, the investigator 
would discover an Arctic roly-poly pudding with, instead 
of fruit and flour, a layer first of all of seal, then biped, seal 
in the centre, then biped, and seal again. This jam-tart 
combination is very self-sustaining and enduring. De- 
prived of food for three days at a stretch the Eskimo lives 

270 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

luxuriously on his own rounded body, as a camel on his 
hump. 

Reading an Arctic bill-of-fare in southern latitudes may 
give one a feeling of disgust and nausea, for it is all so 
"bluggy." You feel differently about it at jo° North. 
You put prejudice far from you, comfort yourself with the 
reflection that raw oysters, lively cheese, and high game 
are acquired tastes, and approach the Arctic menu with 
mind and stomach open to conviction. It is all a matter 
of adjustment. Because raw rotten fish is not eaten in 
Boston or in Berkeley Square there is no reason why it 
should not be a staple on Banks's Land. 

We had brought with us on our transport two years' 
provisions for the detachment of Royal Northwest 
Mounted Police stationed at Herschel Island, and we had 
been privileged to taste the concentrated cooking-eggs and 
desiccated vegetables which formed part of their commis- 
sariat. Now, a concentrated egg and a desiccated carrot 
or turnip bear no more family-likeness to the new-laid 
triumph of the old Dominick or the succulent vegetable 
growing in your own back-yard than the tin-type of Aunt 
Mary taken at the country fair does to the dear old body 
herself. Whale-meat is better than concentrated cooking- 
egg, seal-blood piping hot more to be desired than that vile 
mess of desiccated vegetables. I know. I feel like the old 
Scot who exclaimed, "Honesty is the best policy. I've 
tried baith." 

But we do not live on seal alone in the North, for there 
is a bewildering bill-of-fare. Reindeer have a parasite 
living on the back between the skin and the flesh, a melliflu- 
ous maggot an inch long. Raw or cooked it is a great 

271 



THE NEW NORTH 

delicacy, and if you shut your eyes it tastes like a sweet 
shrimp. Don't be disgusted. If you have scooped 
shrimps from their native heath, you have discovered the 
shrimp, too, to be a parasite. 

Another Arctic titbit is that fleshy cushion of the jaw 
of the whale which in life holds the baleen. What is 
whale-gum like? It tastes like chestnuts, looks like cocoa- 
nut, and cuts like old cheese. Whale-blubber tastes like 
raw bacon and it cannot very easily be cooked, as it would 
liquify too soon. It is a good deal better than seal-oil, 
which to a southern palate is sweet, mawkish, and sickly. 
Seal-oil tastes as lamp-oil smells. But you can approach 
without a qualm boiled beluga-skin, which is the skin of the 
white whale. In its soft and gelatinous form it ranks 
among northern delicacies with beaver-tail and moose- 
nose, being exceedingly tasty and ever so much more palat- 
able than pigs-feet. 

Musquash in the spring is said to be tender and tooth- 
some, but that overpowering smell of musk proved too 
much for our determination. You may break, you may 
shatter the rat if you will, but the scent of the musk-rose 
will cling to it still. There is a limit to every one's scien- 
tific research, and, personally, until insistent hunger gnaws 
at my vitals and starvation looms round the edge of the 
next iceberg, I draw the line at muskrat and am not 
ashamed to say so. Compelling is the association of ideas, 
and the thought grips one that muskrat must taste as 
domestic rats (are rats domestic?) look. Raw fish at 
the first blush does not sound palatable, yet raw oysters 
appeal. The truth is that meat or fish frozen is eaten 
raw without any distaste, the freezing exerting on the 

272 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

tissues a metabolic change similar to that effected by cook- 
ing; and it is convincingly true that bad fish is ever so 
much better frozen than cooked. 

Blubber is not a staple, as is so often misstated, but it is 
a much esteemed delicacy. During the summer months 
the Eskimo has to provide light and fuel for that long half- 
year of darkness within the igloo. The blubber obtained 
in summer is carefully rendered. down and stored in seal- 
skin bags — the winter provision of gas-tank, electric stor- 
age-battery, coal-cellar, and wood-pile. In using oil for 
fuel, this master artificer of the North has anticipated by 
decades, if not centuries, the inventive adaptability of his 
"civilised" cousins. The blubber appears in a blanket be- 
tween the skin of the animal and its flesh, and when it is 
spared for food, is cut into delicious strings, an inch wide, 
an inch deep, and the longer the better. Give a Fur-Land 
kiddie a strip of this sweetmeat and he grins like that 
Cheshire cat he has never seen. He doesn't eat it, but 
drops it into the cavernous recesses of his stomach, as you 
lower your buckets into the well of English undefiled. 
"Disgusting," you say. It's all a matter of latitude. 
Watching a roly-poly Innuit baby finding its stomach-level 
with plummet of seal-blubber sustains the interest of the 
grand-stand for a longer period than watching your child 
dallying with the dripping delights of an "all-day sucker." 
These little babies have the digestion of an ostrich and 
his omniverous appetite. Suckled at their mothers' breasts 
until they are two or even three years old, when they are 
weaned they at once graduate into the bill-of-fare of the 
adult. Walrus-hide is about as uncompromising as ele- 
phant-hide, and an inch thick. You see little chaps of 

273 



THE NEW NORTH 

three and four struggling valiantly with this, nibbling at 
it with keen delight, as a puppy does on an old shoe, or 
your curled Fauntleroy on an imported apple. The Es- 
kimo mother has no green apples to contend with in her 
kindergarten and need never pour castor-oil upon the trou- 
bled waters. Every day in the year her babies are 
crammed with marrow and grease, the oil of gladness and 
the fat of the land. 

To many Eskimo the contents of the paunch of the rein- 
deer is the only vegetable food they get, and this is eaten 
without salt, as all their food is eaten. They crack the 
bones of any animal they kill to get the marrow, which 
is eaten on the spot, the broken bones being pulverised 
and boiled to make much-prized gelatine. To his fish and 
flesh the Eskimo adds a bewildering plenitude of wild- 
fowl. Last spring, eighteen hundred geese and ducks 
were killed by Eskimo on Herschel Island sand-pit. It is 
the paradise of pot-hunter and wing-shot. Captain Ellis 
of the Karl uk, with one Eskimo fellow-sportsman, got a 
bag of 1 132 ducks, geese, and swans in three days' shoot- 
ing, to send to the wrecked whalers off Point Barrow, 
Alaska. 

Who are these people, and whence came they? Each 
little tribe is a book unread before, and full to the brim of 
fascination. When they are confronted with the picture 
of an elephant in a current magazine, they are all excite- 
ment. The book is carried eagerly to the old man sun- 
ning himself down in the anchored oomiak. Animation, 
retrospection, agitation chase from his seamed face all 
traces of drowsiness. "We used to know it" "Our 
fathers have told us." "This land-whale with its tail in 

274 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

front once lived in the land of the Innuit." We are now 
the ones to become excited. Intending merely to amuse 
these fellow-Canadians who had been kind to us, we stum- 
ble upon a story of intense interest. "Where did your 
fathers see this animal?'' we asked. "Here, in this coun- 
try. In the ice his bones were hidden," said the old man. 
With this he relapsed into the torpor we had disturbed, 
and no further word did we elicit. 

Captain Mogg, of the whaling schooner Olga, two win- 
ters ago pursued his whaling operations far to the north 
and east. Ice-bound at Prince Albert Land, he stumbled 
upon a little settlement of Eskimo. These were completely 
isolated from and had had no communication with white 
men or any community of their own race. Only one of 
their number had seen a white man before — one old, old 
woman, the grandmother of the band. The captain of 
the Olga speaks Eskimo fluently, and to him this ancestress 
of the "lost tribe" had an interesting story to tell. She 
remembered a white man who came across the Great Sea 
from the west in "a big kayak," and she extended her arms 
to show its size. Tier people had given this stranger seal- 
meat and blubber and the "Chief" from the great ship had 
presented her with a piece of cloth as red as the new-spilt 
blood of the seal. This grandmother-in-Ice-Land is with- 
out shadow of doubt the very child to whom M'Clure gave 
a piece of red flannel far back in the early fifties while 
prosecuting his double search for the Northwest Passage 
and the lost Franklin. We have M'Clure's record of the 
incident and the little girl's questioning wonder, — "Of 
what animal is this the skin?" Thus does history mani- 
fest itself on the other side of the shield "after many days." 

275 



THE NEW NORTH 

Through the years, the Eskimo has fared better than the 
Indian. It would seem that the London Directorate of 
the H. B. Co. expected its servants within the Arctic Circle 
in the days that are past to do almost a Creator's part and 
make all things of nothing. The scanty provisions and 
trading goods from England which filtered in thus far 
were to be given to the Indians in exchange for furs, while 
the Factor and his people were largely expected to "live 
on the country." 

Cannibalism was not unknown. The winter of 1841-2 
was an especially hard one. On the 18th March, 1841, J. 
William Spence and Murdock Morrison were dispatched 
with the winter express from Fort Good Hope to Fort 
Macpherson. During the second night out, while they 
were asleep in the encampment, they were knocked on the 
head by four starving Indian women, immediately cut to 
pieces, and devoured. It is further reported that these 
women previously had killed and eaten their husbands 
and all their children except one little boy. Of the two 
murdered Scots they ate what they could that night and 
made pemmican of what was over, reporting afterward 
that one was sweet but that the other, tasting of tobacco, 
was not so good. 

Father Petitot gives us another glimpse of that awful 
winter. His naive words are, "Chie-ke-nayelle, a Slavi 
from Fort Norman, was a winning fellow, handsome, gra- 
cious, the possessor of a happy countenance. On his feat- 
ures played always a smile of contentment and innocence. 
In his youth he had eaten of human flesh during the terri- 
ble famine of 1841. He killed his young daughter with 
a hatchet-blow, cooked her like flesh, and ate her as a 

276 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

meat-pate. It is said that after one has partaken of hu- 
man flesh, the appetite for it often returns. I hasten to 
add that Chie-ke-nayelle, in spite of the soubriquet man- 
genr de mondc which is irrevocably rivetted to his name, 
has not succumbed to such an appetite. He is indeed an 
excellent Christian. Nevertheless, I would not like to 
camp with Chie-ke-nayelle in time of famine." 

Another starvation story related by the good Father is 
not quite so ghastly. He tells us of one "M. Finlaison of 
burlesque memory," who, when all provisions were out, 
took his fiddle and, calling the men of his fort before the 
door of his empty larder, played to them a Scottish reel. 
That was their dinner for the day, — instead of meat they 
had sound. The narrator adds, "In America they would 
have lynched the too-jovial Scotchman. In the North- 
west the good half-breeds laughed and applauded the mas- 
ter." 

The winter of 1844 also was a season of distress. Re- 
ferring to this year, a beautiful young Indian woman said 
to the sympathetic priest, "I did not wish to eat the arm 
of my father. I was then a small child of eight, and I 
had not been able to see my old father eaten without cry- 
ing out with loud screams. But my mother called to me in 
rage, Tf you do not eat of it, it is that you condemn us 
and hate us, then you will surely go the same way.' And 
I ate the flesh of my father, hiding my sobs and devouring 
my tears, for fear of being killed like him; so much was 
I afraid of the eyes of my mother." 

Another Indian woman confesses, "I left my husband, 
a hunter at the fort, and took with me by the hand my 
only child, a boy of six, and directed my steps towards 

277 



THE NEW NORTH 

Ka-cho-Gottine. It was indeed far. I only knew the way 
by hearsay. Once I myself have eaten of my father, but 
now I am a Christian and that horrible time is far from 
me. I have a qualm in thinking that my stomach has par- 
taken of the author of my days. Meanwhile his flesh 
has become mine, and what will happen to us both on the 
final resurrection day?" Here Father Petitot interpo- 
lates, "Ah! if she had only read Dante!" "I did not in- 
tend to keep my boy with me, he was too young and too 
weak. I did not wish to devour him. I had no heart 
for that. I decided to abandon him. At the first camp 
I left him, and knew they would eat him there. I wept on 
thinking of the horrible death that awaited my only child. 
But what could I do?" This story has a more comforta- 
ble ending than the previous one. We breathe relief in 
learning from the priest that the following night the little 
boy overtook his mother. He had walked all day and 
all night, following her snowshoe tracks. They went on 
together, the third day they snared some hares, and their 
troubles were over. 

Father Petitot tells of a Rabbit-skin Indian who found 
a mummified body in the forks of a tree near the Ram- 
parts of the Mackenzie and who came running into the 
Mission, his hair on end with fright, asking excitedly, 
"Did God make that man or was he made by the men of 
the Hudson's Bay?" 

Another tale of his is of an Indian, Le Petit Coclwn, 
who had a tape- worm and thought it was a whale. "Un- 
fortunate!" exclaims the Father, "possessed of a whale! 
That's the difference between Le Petit Coclwn and Jonah." 
Sucking Pig said he would join the Church if the priest 

278 



MAINLY CONCERNING FOOD 

would rid him of the tape-worm. But we must use the 
words of Petitot himself, for they are too delicious to lose. 
"Christmas night, 1865, after midnight mass, Le Petit 
Cochon, carefully purged, both as to body and soul, by an 
emetic, two purgatives, and a good confession, content as 
a King, received holy baptism. I gave him the name of 
Noel." 

In starvation times, guests were not appreciated. Rob- 
ert Campbell of the H. B. Company, writing from Fort 
Halkett in 1840, says, "God grant that the time of priva- 
tion may soon end, and that I may not see a soul from 
below till the snow disappears." These days of the early 
forties when England was engaged with the Chartist ris- 
ings at home and her Chinese wars abroad, were surely 
parlous times up on this edge of empire. The Fort Simp- 
son journals of February 4, 1843, record, "The Cannibal, 
with young Noir, and others of the party of Laman, ar- 
rived this evening in the last stage of existence, being com- 
pelled by starvation to eat all their furs." 

Still these sonsy Scots kept a good heart and were able 
to jest at their misfortunes with the grim humour that be- 
longs to their race. Neither empty larder nor other mis- 
fortune disheartened them. The recurrence of New 
Year's Day and the Feast of St. Andrew were made ever 
occasions for rejoicing. Up on the Pelly Forks under date 
of November 30th, 1848, the record reads, "Though far 
from our native land and countrymen, let us pass St. An- 
drew's Day in social glee. So fill your glasses, my lads, 
and pass the bottle round." Three years later, on the 
same anniversary, the lines are, "Very cold for St. An- 
drew's, and no haggis for dinner." 

279 



THE NEW NORTH 

And as January ist ushers in the year 1845, the Factor 
at Fort Macpherson bursts into verse: 

"This day, Time winds th' exhausted chain 
To run the twelvemonths' length again. 
I see the old bald-pated fellow 
With ardent eyes, complexion sallow, 
Adjust the unimpaired machine 
To wheel the equal, dull routine." 

Underneath the record a postscript appears, in another 
hand : 

"Oh let us love our occupations, 
Bless the Co. and their relations, 
Be content with our poor rations, 
And always know our proper stations." 



•ci 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE TALE OF A WHALE 
"In the North Sea lived a whale." 

What is a whale? Well, although the whalers dub it 
so, it is not a fish, but is a true mammal, the last of the 
mammoth creatures that trod the earth and floundered 
the seas of a past age. The whale is the biggest, the meek- 
est, and the most interesting of living animals. As we 
go north, we readjust all our ideas of distance and im- 
mensity. Rivers are longer, lakes more majestic, and 
whales bigger than we have ever dreamed. Examining 
a stranded whale at Herschel, we see the flippers to be 
really hands with four fingers and a thumb enveloped in 
a sheath, and rudimentary hind-legs are discovered under 
the tough skin. Without doubt, the ancestors of the whale 
were land mammals which became adapted to a littoral life, 
and in splashing round the shore acquired the habit of 
swimming. Subsequently carried out to sea, they became 
under the new environment the structure as we see it. 

Off the delta of the Mackenzie, the Circumpolar of Arc- 
tic Bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is making his last 
stand. Unless a close season is enforced, this cetacean 
carrying round his ten thousand dollar mouthful of baleen 
will soon fold his fluked fins like the Arab and swing that 
huge body of his into line with the Great Auk, the Sea- 
20 281 



THE NEW NORTH 

Otter, the Plains Buffalo, and all the melancholy procession 
of Canadian Has-Beens. 

Whales divide themselves into two great classes: those 
furnished with teeth (the Denticete) and those in which 
the place of teeth is supplied by a sieve process, furnishing 
the baleen or "whalebone" of commerce (the Mysticete 




We Tell the Tale of a Whale 

or Balaenidae). The members of the Baleen Whale fam- 
ily are the Sulphur-Bottoms, the Finner Whales or Ror- 
quals, the Humpbacks, and the king of all whales, the 
founder of the municipality of Herschel Island, whom his 
pursuers call indiscriminately the "Arctic Whale," "Polar 
Whale," "Greenland Whale," "Bowhead," "Right Whale," 
or "Icebreaker." 

Bowheads run in length from seventy to one hundred 

282 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

feet, weighing up to one hundred and ten tons each, there 
being authentic records of exceptional specimens whose 
weight reached two hundred and fifty tons. Comparisons 
are illuminating. The mammoth or hairy elephant in the 
Field Columbian Museum is nine feet six inches high and 
twelve feet in longitudinal measurement. The lips of a 
Bowhead whale are from fifteen to twenty feet in length 
and yield from one to two tons of pure oil each, — lips that 
turn a nigger-minstrel green with envy ! The eyes placed 
in the posterior part of the head are each as big as an 
orange. The tongue of the whale is twenty feet long, 
and this member, by means of which he pushes to the top 
of his palate the animalculse on which he feeds (as you 
would a gooseberry), gives the whaler six tons of oil. 
The aorta is as big as a man's waist and, at each pulsation 
of the heart, spurts out ten to fifteen gallons of blood. 
The heart itself is more than a yard in transverse diameter. 

The toothed whales carry the teeth in their lower jaw, 
the most valuable of this lot being the Spermaceti or 
Sperm Whale or Cachalot, the Pilot Whale or Ca'ing 
Whale, the White Whale or Beluga, the Killer or Orca, 
the Narwhal, and such small fry as Blackfish, Porpoises, 
and Dolphins. Only the toothed whale eats fish ; the others 
live upon animalcuke and the most minute of marine life, 
called "brit" by the whalers. The Bowhead that we have 
come up to the Arctic to see feeds on the smallest infu- 
soria. He couldn't eat a herring if by* that one act he 
might attain immortality. 

Whale errors die hard. Artists persistently depict the 
big animals as spouting beautiful fountains of water, but 
the fact is that whales breathe out air only from their 

283 



THE NEW NORTH 

lungs. They come to the surface for that purpose, the 
"blowing" being quite analogous to the breathing of land 
mammals. Noticing the condensation of a whale's breath 
up here in the icy Arctic, we guess at the cause which 
gave rise to this particular blunder. Milton in thirteen 
words manages to perpetrate three (whale) bulls. "At 
his gills draws in, and at his trunk, spouts out, a sea." 
Guiltless of either gills or trunk, no whale ever spouted 
out anything but common or seaside air. 

The Bowhead is hunted for his "whalebone"; the Cacha- 
lot or true Sperm, the lord of the toothed whales, for that 
great lake of sperm oil and spermaceti which he carries 
round in a portable tank in the top of his head. 

It is customary to call whales "fierce," "savage," "mur- 
derous," but this is rank libel, for the whale is timid and 
affectionate. Every family, however, has its black sheep. 
The Orca or Killer is the terror alike of sealing-rookeries, 
fish-schools, and whale bone whales. One Killer taken 
up here had in its stomach fourteen porpoises and fourteen 
large seals, and it choked to death on the fifteenth. Banded 
in Molly Maguire groups, the Killers murder the young 
seal-pups taking their first lessons in swimming off the 
Pribilofs. We have seen them, a pack of hungry sea- 
wolves, surround a Bowhead whale! A number of these 
brigands of the Bering Sea hang on to the lower lip of 
the big whale till the opened mouth allows a Killer to 
enter bodily, when the Bowhead's tongue is eaten out and 
the whole sea is a shambles. At the approach of the Killer 
even sea-lions seek the shore. And the Alaska Indian 
who would pose as Bad Bill of the Clambank to the third 
generation carves a Killer as the crest of his totem. 

284 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

The American is more aggressive — shall we say pro- 
gressive? — than the Canadian. The Bowhead whale has 
within recent years chosen for his summer habitat the 
pleasant waters off Arctic Canada. Each of these floating 
tanks of baleen and oil nets his lucky captor from thirteen 
thousand dollars upwards, and yet for twenty years Cana- 




Two Little Ones at Herschel Island 



dians have been content to see their more enterprising 
cousins from California come into their back-yard and 
carry off these oily prizes. 

Is there much money in whales to-day? Are not oil and 
whalebone drugs in the market? Let us see. Off the 
Mackenzie mouth is Herschel Island anchorage. Here, 
since 1889, the American whaling- fleet, setting out from 
San Francisco, has made its summer stand, its winter wait- 

285 



THE NEW NORTH 

ing-quarters. One whale to one boat in a season covers 
the cost of outfitting and maintenance, and more than one 
spells substantial profit. In 1887, one °f the Arctic whal- 
ers, the steamer Orca, captured twenty-eight whales. The 
Jcanctte in 1905 got ten whales and a calf, the Karluk got 
seven whales, the Alexander eight, the Bozvhcad seven. 
The boats wintering at Herschel in that year had among 
them thirty-three whales and one calf. At fifteen thousand 
dollars each (San Francisco values for that season) the 
thirty-three whales netted very nearly half a million. Two 
years later the Narwhal took out fifteen whales, the 
Jcanctte and Bozvhcad each four. Although the average 
bone per head is two thousand pounds, sometimes the 
catch runs far beyond that figure. A whale caught by 
Capt. Simmons of the ship John M. Winthrop carried 
thirty-three hundred and fifty pounds of bone in its head, — 
$16,750! One of these at a time would be good fishing. 

The first Bowhead taken from these waters went in 
1891 to the American steam-whaler Grampus, her catch 
for three seasons being twenty-one whales. Previous to 
this, even wise whale-men thought it useless to go "to the 
east'ard of P'int Barrow" for this big whale; since that 
date the catch in Canadian waters has been thirteen hun- 
dred and forty-five whales. Ignoring the oil altogether 
and putting the "bone" (baleen) at two thousand pounds 
each whale and the value of it at five dollars a pound, 
both conservative figures, we find that thirteen and a half 
millions in whale-values have gone out of this Canadian 
sea-pasture the past twenty years, by the back-door route. 

Are there as good fish in the sea as have come out of it ? 
Expert evidence differs. Captain George B. Leavitt, of 

286 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

the Narwhal, in 1907 lowered twenty-two times without 
striking and yet went out with fifteen whales. He says 
he saw that season more whales than any year previous, 
but that they are on the move east and north. 

The general practice is for a ship to reach this water 
from San Francisco in the early summer; whale as long 
as the ice will permit ; go into winter quarters at Herschel ; 
get out of the ice as soon as possible next summer, prob- 
ably the first week in July; whale as long as it can stay 
without getting nipped by the new ice of September ; carry 
out its catch through Bering Strait to San Francisco as 
late as possible; dispose of the cargo; refit; return next 
season, and do it all over again. The active whaling- 
season is restricted to eight or ten weeks, and every one 
on board a whaler from captain to galley-devil works on 
a lay. The captain gets one-twelfth of the take, the first 
mate one twenty-second, the second mate one-thirtieth, 
the third mate one forty-fifth, the carpenter one seventy- 
fifth, the steward one eightieth, fore-mast sailors one 
eightieth, green hands one two-hundredth. Engineers 
get about one hundred and twenty dollars a month 
straight. It looks all right in the contract signed 
a year ago in a San Francisco waterfront dive, but it 
never works out as it looks on paper. The A. B. over- 
draws from the slop-chest (often before the whale is 
caught) the vulgar-fraction which stands for his share 
of fat things, and you come across him possessed of the 
sulky mood which dining on dead horse (land or marine) 
induces in most of us. 

A trade in fur also makes out by this Pacific-Arctic, 
Arctic-Pacific route. We estimate that total products to 

28; 



THE NEW NORTH 

the value of a million and a half find their way each year 
out of Canada in the ships of the whaling-fleet. "The 
farther north the finer fur" is a recognised law. The 
American ship brings flour, provisions, Krag-Jorgensen 
guns, ammunition, tea, trinkets to the Eskimo, and receive 
for these the choicest furs this continent produces. 

The Canadian Provinces which propinquity would seem 
to call to this international whale-joust are British Colum- 
bia and Alberta. British Columbia, in her splendid whal- 
ing-stations and refineries on Vancouver Island, has tasted 
whale-blood, the blood of the Humpback and Sulphur-bot- 
tom, the Orca or Killer, the Cachalot or true Sperm, and 
one would think her appetite sufficiently whetted to want 
to acquire the "feel" of Arctic Bowhead profits, the fattest 
dividend-sheets of them all. Alberta claims as rich hin- 
terland all the coal and gas and timber, tar, furs, feathers, 
and fish between the parallel of 6o° and the uttermost edge 
of things. These winning bulks of blubber should by all 
laws of the game be hers. Some day Alberta's metropolis 
on the Saskatchewan, overcoming the rapids on the Atha- 
basca and the Slave, will send her deep-sea vessels by 
interior waterways to pull down into Canadian pockets a 
tardy share of these leviathans. Will there be any left? 
It is hard to say. 

Little wind-swept island of Herschel! We reach you 
to-day not by deep-sea vessel from the westward but up 
through the continent by its biggest northward-trending 
stream. Eighty miles through the Northern Ocean itself 
from the Mackenzie mouth brings our whale-boat grating 
upon the shingle. "As far as we go !" This is essentially 
the Island of Whales, the farthest north industrial centre 

288 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

in America, the world's last and most lucrative whaling- 
ground. It is well to take our bearings. We are in lati- 
tude 69^° N. and just about 139 west of Greenwich; we 
are a full thousand miles nearer our Pole than the Tierra 
del Fuegan in South America is to his. And it blows. A 
nor'easter on Herschel never dies in debt to a sou'wester. 
Lifting itself one thousand feet above sea-level, this sep- 
tentrional shelter for ships where the seagulls wheel at our 
approach, and as they wheel, whine like lost souls, is twen- 
ty-three miles in circumference, with neither water nor 
fuel. For six months every year comparative darkness 
wraps it around. Snow and ice hold it fast till mid-July; 
and yet people with tropic isles to choose from and green 
valleys where the meadow-lark sings have crowded here 
for twenty years to make their home! 

The most incongruous lot that Fate ever jostled together 
into one corner, — who are they? The whaler of every 
country and complexion from Lascar to Swede, Eskimo 
men and women and big-eyed babies, half-caste hybrids of 
these two factors, Missionaries, and Mounted Police. It 
is interesting to note the order of their arrival. The 
whaler drawn by oily lure followed the Bowhead east and 
north from Bering Sea. To man his boats, to hunt cari- 
bou for him, and to furnish temporary spouses, the whaler 
picked up and attached to his menage the Eskimo from the 
mainland in little bunches en famille. Ensuing connubial 
complications brought the missionary on the scene. To 
keep the whaler and the missionary from each other's 
throats, and incidentally to make it easy for the American 
citizen to trade in Canadian baleen and blubber, came the 
debonair Royal Northwest Mounted Policeman, the red- 

289 



THE NEW NORTH 

coated incarnation of Pax Britannica. There winter at 
Herschel every year two hundred and fifty whalers and an 
equal number of Kogmollyc and Nunatalmute Eskimo. 

Pauline Cove on Herschel Island has three fathoms of 
water and can winter fifty ships. Landing- and looking 
about us, we experience a feeling of remoteness, of aliena- 
tion from the world of railroads and automobiles and opera 
tickets. Back of the harbour are the officers' quarters of 
the whaling company, the barracks of the Royal Northwest 
Mounted Police, the huts of the Eskimo; in front of us 
the clear panorama of the mountains on the shore-line. 

North America here, in profound and lasting loneliness, 
dips its shaggy arms and ice-bound capes into an ocean 
illuminated now by the brief smile of summer but, for ten 
months out of the twelve, drear and utterly desolate. The 
most striking features of the off-shore islands is that they 
are islands of ice rather than of earth. Slightly rising 
above ocean-level, they exhibit one or two feet of sandy 
soil, and between this scant counterpane and the interior 
foundations of the earth is nothing but pure translucent 
ice. There is going on a rapid disintegrating of these 
islands. The whaler calls this far fringe of America "the 
ocean graveyard" and "the step-mother to ships." There 
have been five wrecks on this coast in recent years: the 
Penelope off Shingle Point, the Bonanza off King Point, 
the Triton on the shores of Herschel itself, the Alexander 
near Horton River, a little missionary craft off Shingle 
Point, and Mikklesen's ship The Duchess of Bedford, 
abandoning her ambitious search for a dream-continent 
in Beaufort Sea to deposit her tapped-camphor-wood bones 
on the edge of the ocean of her quest. 

290 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

The Mackenzie River carries the freshening influence 
of its current for miles out to sea, and the whole mainland 
coast is piled high with drift-trees carried by its stream 
to the Eskimo, — a boon more prized by them than the 
most seductive story the missionary can tell of the 
harps and golden streets of that strange heaven of the 
white man where whale-meat is unknown and blubber 
enters not. 

In July, resurrection comes to Herschel, — saxifrages, 
white anemones through the snow, the whoop of the mos- 
quito-hawk, and the wild fox dodging among the dwarf- 
junipers and uncovered graves! And the Midnight Sun? 
It is not a continual blare of light for twenty-four hours. 
It sweeps through the midnight heavens, but between ten 
o'clock in the evening and four in the morning there is a 
sensible change. Colour tints and lines of demarcation on 
sea and ships are harder to distinguish, shadows less clear- 
cut. Birds roost and even flowers close, Nature whisper- 
ing to both that, if they would reproduce after their kind 
in the short Arctic summer, energies must be conserved. 
Surely the world holds nothing more beautiful than this 
Polar night, this compelling gloaming, the "cockshut 
light" of Francis Thompson. Here the evening and the 
morning sit together hand in hand, and, even as you watch, 
lead in the day, the new day born beneath the starless 
sky. The July sun stabs into activity our incongruous 
community. On board the vessels guns are cleaned, har- 
poons pointed, whale-boats caulked, and the winter deck- 
house is lifted off bodily. Up in the rigging fox-skins 
and all the year's fur-booty sweeten in the sunlight, and 
eagerly the spring "leads" in the ice are watched from 

291 



THE NEW NORTH 

hour to hour if a way be opened to trend out in the track 
of the big Bowhead. 

Strange people crowd the fo'castle. Two years ago 
the ships bound for "Outside" got nipped in early ice and 
were forced to winter at Herschel all unprepared. Re- 
duced to half-rations the crew got weak, and scurvy threat- 
ened. The Mounted Police (who by the way are 
"mounted" in imagination only, as there is nothing for the 
most gallant to stride here but Husky dogs), in making 
examination of the men below decks, got to their enquiries 
a technical reply that staggered them. One able-bodied 
seaman, busied with between-decks blubber, proved to be 
a medical man with degrees from two colleges. He sub- 
sequently made at the request of the Police a searching 
report on the state of health of the island community, add- 
ing suggestions for its improvement. The report was 
signed "T. H. Toynbee Wright, M. D.," and, after making 
it, the A. B., M. D. saluted, donned his oily overalls, and 
turned once more to the savoury spoils of the Bowhead. 
Which all goes to prove that in these latitudes "you never 
can tell." 

Whale-men at Herschel give whales five names accord- 
ing to age and size: they are "suckers" under a year, 
"short-heads" as long as they are suckled, "stunts" at two 
years, "skull-fish" with baleen less than six feet long, and 
"size-fish" at the age when a boy reaches man's estate. 
A whale needs no re-incarnation theory of the theosophist, 
for he crowds enough experience into one sea-life to satisfy 
the fact-thirst of the greediest little Gradgrind. Fancy 
thrashing the sea for a thousand years ! A "sucker" who 
happened to be disporting round the British Isles when 

292 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

Alfred the Great was burning those historic cakes and 
prefiguring with candles the eight-hour day may still be 
chasing whale-brit round an Arctic iceberg. The whale 
mates, we are told, once and for keeps. Jogging along 
from one ocean end to another with the same wife for a 
thousand years without turning fluke to look at an affinity! 
Shades of Chicago and Pittsburg, hide your wings! 
Whales follow their annual migration as regularly as do 
moose and caribou on land, the seal and salmon in the 
Pacific. Seen first in May in Bering Strait, the Bow- 
heads trend from here north and east, doubling back on 
their westward journey in July and August, when the 
Herschel Island whalers go out to intercept them. Sep- 
t-ember sees the great mammals off Southern Kamchatka, 
and year by year with regularity they follow this Arctic 
orbit, edging farther in successive seasons to the north 
and east. The usual track of any family of whales may be 
left at a tangent on account of a furious storm, excessive 
cold, the want of food, the harassing of an enemy, or a 
change in the season of their amours. 

A whale, for an old party, is not so slow. Alarmed 
while extended motionless at the surface of the sea, he 
can sink in five or six seconds beyond the reach of human 
enemies. His velocity along the surface horizontally, div- 
ing obliquely or perpendicularly, seems to be the same, a 
rate of from twelve to fourteen miles an hour. Now, to 
carry a whale of seventy-four tons through the Arctic at 
the rate of twelve miles an hour would require a (sea) 
horse-power of one hundred and forty-five. Captain 
Scoresby, a whale expert, by careful calculation estimates 
that a surface of two square miles of the Arctic Ocean 

293 



THE NEW NORTH 

contains 23,888,000,000,000,000 of the minute animalculse 
on which the Bowhead feeds, so we hope there is enough 
to go round. He quaintly elucidates this inconceivable 
number by explaining that eighty thousand persons would 
have been employed since Adam in counting these little 
medusae in the two square miles. Why any one should 
count them we fail to conceive and gladly accept Scores- 
by's figures. 

The poet tells of shooting an arrow into the air and 
"long years afterwards in an oak he found the arrow still 
unbroke." Those who stick harpoons into whales and suf- 
fer the animal to get away start floating rumours (a sort 
of cyclometer of the sea) for their grandsons to read in 
blubbery history three generations after. England offered 
knighthood and a bag of sterling pounds to him who would 
discover a Northwest Passage connecting the Atlantic and 
the Pacific. M'Clure and the heirs of Sir John Franklin 
disputed the honour of this achievement. In the "North 
Sea" lived a whale who exhibited in his own person indub- 
itable proof of having found that elusive Anian Strait. At 
Herald Island, due north of Bering Strait, in 1886, a whale 
was caught who carried round in his inside pocket of 
blubber the head of a harpoon marked Ansell Gibbs. The 
Ansel I Gibbs was wrecked at Marble Island south of Ches- 
terfield Inlet on Hudson Bay on October 13, 187 1. Imag- 
ination sees opportunity in this for establishing hyperbo- 
rean letter-service between lovers kept apart by cruel ice- 
floes. Eskimo Evangeline wandering under Northern 
Lights seeking Dusky Gabriel might find here a carrier- 
pigeon of utility. Is it not Pliny who gives us a delightful 
account of Hippo's enamoured dolphin? 

294 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

Captain Kelly was the first to notice that whales sing 
One Sunday, while officers from three ships were "gam- 
ming" over their afternoon walrus-meat, Kelly dropped 
his glass with, "I hear a Bowhead!" There was much 
chaffing about "Kelly's band/' but Kelly weighed anchor 
and went to find the band-wagon. Every sail followed 
his, and the result was the bagging of three whales. 
Among Bowheads, this sing-song is a call made by the 
leader of a school as he forces passage through Bering 
Sea to give notice to those who follow that the straits 
are clear of ice. Walruses and seals and all true mammals 
having lungs and living in the water have a bark that 
sounds weird enough coming up from hidden depths. 
Every look-out from a mast-head notices that, when one 
whale is struck, at the very impact of the harpoon the 
whole school is "gallied" or stampeded as they hear the 
death-song. The dying swan may not sing, but there is 
no doubt about the ante-mortem Valkyrie song of the 
whale. From the Bowhead the sound comes like the 
drawn-out "hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo" of the hoot-owl. A whaler 
stops coiling his harpoon-line to tell you that "beginning on 
'F' the cry may rise to 'A,' 'B,' or even 'C before slipping 
back to 'F' again." He assures us that, "with the Hump- 
back the tone is much finer, sounding across the water 
like the 'E' string of a violin." 

Whalers themselves on this grim shore die without re- 
quiem. Every year men desert from the ships. They 
make their way across from Herschel to a mainland of 
whose geography they know nothing, thinking that once 
they strike the shore they can find railway trains which will 
take them to the gold-mines. One man, Morand, left his 

295 



THE NEW NORTH 

ship without sled or dogs. He carried only a gun, twenty 
rounds of ammunition, some cigarette papers and tobacco. 
In the spring they found him about a day's journey from 
the ship, frozen to death. He sat with his gun leaning 
against his left arm, and a cigarette in his mouth. Both 
feet and one hand were eaten off. He had fired off nine 
shots, probably as a signal which was never heard. 




Breeding Grounds of the Seals 



Within recent years, on other shores but this one, an 
innovation has entered the whaling business. The mod- 
ern plan is to have shore-refineries and from these strategic 
bases to send out strongly-built high-speed steamers to 
shoot detonating harpoons from a cannon into the whale. 
Such methods are pursued with profit on Newfoundland 
and Vancouver Island shores. The gun-harpoon, the in- 
vention of Sven Foyn, a Norwegian, is furnished at the 
point with a contrivance which, as it enters the whale, 

296 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

opens out anchor-like flukes which clutch his vitals. Con- 
nected by a line to the whaling-steamer, the harpoon holds 
the quarry until the whaler steams alongside, when the 
"fish" is soon dispatched. A nozzle is attached to the har- 
poon-wound, and hot air from the engine pumped into the 
"proposition" keeps it afloat. The Vancouver Island sta- 
tion has bagged as many as five whales in one day, — 
Cachalots, Humpbacks, and Sulphur-Bottoms. 

The Eskimo say, "There is no part of a seal that is 
not good," and the same applies to whales. Blubber and 
bone have their regular markets. The viscera, scraps of 
fat and oddments tried out in fiery furnaces, appear in the 
form of pungent snuff-like powder, a much-sought fertil- 
iser. From the Vancouver Island stations it goes across 
to enrich the cane-fields of Honolulu and the rose-gardens 
of Nippon. The Japs are eager customers for the dried 
or smoked whale-meat; and whale-steak broiled to a turn 
can scarcely be distinguished from choice porterhouse, 
since it is absolutely free from fishy taste. Far back in the 
fourteenth century the Biscayans made whale-venison their 
staple, and Norway to-day has more than one establish- 
ment which turns out canned whale. Newfoundlanders 
find whale-meat a welcome change from cod perpetual, and 
I have seen the Indians of Cape Flattery eat it when it 
hailed you a mile to windward and had more than begun 
to twine like a giddy honeysuckle. Now, enterprising 
people are talking of canning whales' milk, a dense yellow 
fluid like soft tallow. When the milk-maid goes out to 
milk a whale she must take half a dozen barrels along as 
milking pails. The Eskimo like it. Soon the soda-foun- 
tains on Fort Macpherson and Herschel Island will bear 
21 297 



THE NEW NORTH 

the legend, "Whale cream soda" and "Best Whale Milk- 
shake." 

To have an even superficial knowledge of the commercial 
products of the whale, one must learn of baleen, of whale- 
oils and spermaceti, of ambergris, whale-guano, whale- 
ivory, and whale-leather. 

What do we do with baleen? It so combines lightness, 
elasticity, and flexibility, that nothing yet invented adapts 
itself so perfectly to all the requirements of the fashion- 
able corset. Whalebone whips are made from single 
pieces of baleen seven or eight feet long. A whalebone 
horsewhip costs from fifteen to eighteen dollars and will 
outlast a dozen cheaper persuaders. The Sairy Gamp um- 
brella of the last generation, which boasted whalebone 
ribs, never "broke its mighty heart" in a rainstorm (and 
incidentally could never be shut up tight). Flexible steel 
has taken the place of whalebone in many of the arts ; but 
new avenues of usefulness open up to baleen. Out of it 
artificial feathers of exquisite lightness and wigs or toupees 
are made. Shredded into fine filaments, baleen is now 
woven in with the other fibres in the manufacture of the 
finest French silks, imparting resilience and elasticity to 
the rich material. A Chicago paper of the date of this 
writing advertises : 

WHALEBONE TEETH $5 

A GREAT DISCOVERY 

THE NEW WHALEBONE PLATE WHICH IS THE LIGHTEST 
AND STRONGEST SET KNOWN 

DOES NOT COVER THE ROOF OF THE MOUTH 

Guaranteed ten years 

YOU BITE CORN OFF THE COB 

298 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

Spermaceti, the solid waxy body carried round in the 
Cachalot's head in solution, is a valuable whale-product. 
Bland and demulcent, spermaceti is employed as an ingre- 
dient in ointments, cosmetics, and cerates. Spermaceti 
candles of definite size form the measure of electric light, 
giving rise to the phrase "of so many candle-power." 
Present-day spermaceti is both a saving and a destructive 
agent. Large quantities of it are used in Europe in the 
manufacture of ecclesiastical candles, and part of the same 
consignment may help to make self-lubricating cartridges. 

Most valuable of all whale-products, the costliest com- 
modity on this earth ounce for ounce with the one excep- 
tion of radium, is ambergris. As amber was once con- 
sidered "the frozen tears of seagulls," so ambergris for 
ages puzzled the ancients. Some called it "the solidified 
foam of the sea," with others it was a "fungoidal growth 
of the ocean analogous to that on trees." When people 
in the old days came across anything exceedingly costly 
they wanted to eat it, on the same principle which makes 
the baby put each new gift into his mouth. So we have 
historic record of pearl soup a la Cleopatra, and dishes 
dashed with ambergris. Milton sings of, — 

"Beasts of chase, or fowl of game, 
In pastry built, or from the spit, or boiled, 
Grisamber-steamed." 

What is this choice tidbit? It is a morbid secretion of 
the intestines of the sick Sperm-whale, and sells for from 
thirty to forty dollars an ounce. Ambergris, if discov- 
ered in the animal itself, is always in a dead or dying body, 
but it is usually found floating on the ocean or cast up 

299 



THE NEW NORTH 

on the shore. Many a day, as kiddies on Vancouver Island 
beaches, have we turned over bunches of kelp, trying to 
smell out that solid, fatty, inflammable dull grey substance 
with its sweet earthy odour. The present-day use of am- 
bergris is to impart to perfumes a floral fragrance. It has 
the power to intensify and fix any odour. In pharmacy, it 
is regarded as a cardiac and anti-spasmodic and as a spe- 
cific against the rabies. For years it has been used in 
sacerdotal rites of the church; and suitors of old times 
sought with it to charm their mistresses. The dying 
sperm, spouting up the ghost, offers of his very vitals to 
aid the lover and serve the church. 

Fascinating are the finds of ambergris. The barque 
Sea-Fox of New Bedford, in 1866, off the coast of Arabia, 
took a one hundred and fifty-six pound mass of ambergris, 
which was sold to the Arabs of Zanzibar for ten thousand 
dollars in gold. The Adeline Gibbs, in the same year, took 
one hundred and thirty-two pounds from a bull-sperm 
south of St. Helena, and sold the hunk for twenty-three 
thousand dollars. Three winters ago an Arctic whaling- 
crew put into Seattle, and there leaked out the interesting 
story of how, not recognising the priceless unguent, they 
had greased their oars, masts, and knee-boots with "a big 
lump of ambergrease." 

In modern whaling not an ounce of the carcase is cast 
as rubbish to the void. The intestines make a soft kid 
which takes any dye and is largely used for artistic leather- 
work. The size of these immense strips makes possible 
splendid belts for machinery with a minimum of joinings. 
The chemically-macerated bones are turned into an "inde- 
structible" crockery-ware which is far more enduring than 

300 



THE TALE OF A WHALE 

anything made of vegetable-fibre. The Beluga gives us 
the best shoe-strings in the world. You can lace your 
shoes with a Beluga lace for two years and be sure it will 
not break the morning you are in an especial hurry to 
catch an inter-Reuben train. 

An interest attaches to living whales which outweighs 
the fascination with which we study their dead parts. 
Each species of the whale propagates with one of its own 
species only. The fidelity of whales to each other exceeds 
the constancy of birds. The whale mother gives birth 
to one calf, and in extremely rare cases two calves, pro- 
ducing every second year, the young being born between 
the end of March and the beginning of May. When the 
mother suckles her young she throws herself on one side 
on the surface of the sea and the calf regularly feeds at 
the breast (like a young Eskimo) for nearly two years. 
During this time the baby is extremely fat and the mother 
correspondingly emaciated. Perhaps nothing in nature 
is more touching than the devotion of a female whale to 
its wounded young. W T halers harpoon the babe at the 
breast so that they may afterwards secure the dam. In 
this case, the mother joins the wounded young under the 
surface of the water, comes up with it when it rises to 
breathe, encourages it to swim off, assists its flight by 
taking it under her fin, and seldom deserts it while life 
remains. 

Unless the Circumpolar Bowhead is to become extinct 
within a decade, the thinking world should strengthen the 
hands of the Canadian authorities in an effort to put a 
close season for four or five years on the great Arctic 
Baleen Whale. At their rate of reproduction it is not so 

301 



THE NEW NORTH 

easy to restock a whale pasture as a salmon stream. Cut- 
ting down a whale which has taken ten centuries to grow 
is like cutting down an oak-tree with a thousand concentric 
rings. You cannot in one or two or twenty scant genera- 
tions of man grow another one to take its place. 



CHAPTER XVII 

SOUTH FROM THE ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

"The old lost stars wheel back, dear lass, 
That blaze in the velvet blue. 
They're God's own guides on the Long Trail — 
The trail that is always new." 

— Kipling. 

A tax on tea caused the revolt of the thirteen Colonies, 
a taunting load of tennis-balls lost France to the Dauphin. 
Eighty years ago on this Arctic edge, white beads, or the 
lack of them, lost a lucrative fur-trade, alienated the 
Loucheux and caused the death of whites. "Trifles make 
the sum of human things." 

The old records tell the story. John Bell from Fort 
Good Hope, under date of August 14th, 1827, writes to 
the Factor at Fort Simpson: 

"The beads sent in for the Loucheux trade are not sufficiently 
large to please them. I request you will endeavour to send in the 
largest size for the trade of the ensuing year. A specimen of the 
kind wanted I send enclosed." 

The Factor at Fort Simpson, under date of November 
22nd of the same year, writes to the Governor and Chief 
Factors at Montreal: 

"I now forward a specimen of the common white beads wanted 
for the trade with the Loucheux Indians. It is their request and 
I hope it will be attended to. I would not venture to make the 
demand, were it not from conviction that without this favourite 

303 



THE NEW NORTH 

article these Indians look with indifference on the best of our goods. 
No other ornamental article is ever asked for or wanted by these 
natives." 

The same official on March 15th, 1828, pleads with 
Montreal : 

"The white beads demanded for the Loucheux trade I hope 
will be sent, and of the size according to sample enclosed. May I 
use the freedom of representing the importance of getting this 
article to the liking of the Indians, to come up by the Montreal 
canoes and be ready for outfit 1829? Three kegs will contain the 
quantity required, 200 to 250 pounds." 

Again on the 29th of November, 1829, he writes Mon- 
treal : 

"The White Beads asked for the trade with the Loucheux are 
not according to the order sent, 15 pounds only of the quantity 
received (200 pounds) are of the proper size, the remainder being 
the same as those in outfit 1825 so much complained of. They 
will not be satisfactory to the Indians. We request you will be 
pleased to make a strong representation to their Honours at Home 
that this article be sent according to order and sample. We now 
conceive to say anything further would be tiresome." 

The Fort Simpson Factor on March 19th, 1830, reports 
to Montreal: 

"The goods came. The white beads was too small and not ac- 
cording to order or sample asked for. The Indians would not 
take them and left the Fort dissatisfied." 

The Trader at Fort Good Hope augments the story by 
recording that the Indians would be better pleased in 
trade with two small kegs of the special beads they wanted 
than with half a ton of any other trade goods which Lon- 
don could manufacture and send out. The sequel of the 

304 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

story is that, disappointed time and again in not getting 
their favourite beads, the Loucheux Indians failed to bring 
in the autumn supply of meat to Fort Good Hope and in 
consequence, before the snows of the winter of 1831 had 
melted, many of the white men attached to that post died 
of starvation. 

We had gone North with the birds in spring and now, 




The Keele Party on the Gravel River 

as we turn our faces homeward, the first migrants with 
strong wing are beginning their southward flight. Our 
travel is against current now, for we make slower time than 
we did coming in and consequently see more of the passing 
shore-line. The last specimens we gather within the Arc- 
tic Circle are the blue blossoms of the flax. In them we 
see the earnest of many a cultivated farm of the future. 
The days are getting perceptibly shorter and one by one 
the old familiar constellations come back in the heavens. 

305 



THE NEW NORTH 

We find it a relief to have once more a twilight and a 
succeeding period of dusk. Yet are we loath to leave this 
fascinating North with its sure future, its quaint to-days, 
and all the glamour of its rich past. 

We had just passed Fort Norman when the sharp eyes 
of an Indian deck-hand saw three figures on the beach 
ahead. Pulling in at the point where the Gravel River 
joins the Mackenzie, we find a regular Robinson Crusoe 
group, — Mr. J. Keele, of the Dominion Government Sur- 
vey, and his two associates. Going in on the Yukon side, 
Mr. Keele's task has been to cross the Divide between the 
Yukon and the Mackenzie, mapping the rocks. The only 
white man they had seen in sixteen months was a French 
priest who had passed yesterday, and whose knowledge 
of current events in Canada and Europe was scanty. They 
were glad to see us. A moose-skin boat showed how 
they had run the rough Gravel; the meat of two moose 
smoked over the camp-fire; their dogs were fat. These 
are men who know the woods — no hard-luck story 
here. It needs only Friday's funny fat umbrella to com- 
plete the picture, with the goat scampering in the middle 
distance. 

Coming on board, the surveyors are greedy for news- 
papers, and we in return learn somewhat of that great 
slice of land which they are the first to traverse. The 
Gravel River is two hundred and fifty-five miles long, with 
"white water" all the way. The force of the current may 
be appreciated from the fact that it is forty-four hundred 
feet above the sea-level at the Height-of-Land and only 
four hundred feet here where it enters the Mackenzie. All 
along the banks of the Gravel are moose, mountain sheep, 

306 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

and caribou. The winter cabin of the party was built 
on the Ross River and there, during the past winter, they 
experienced a temperature of 54 below. A party of this 
kind must be to a large extent self-supporting, as it would 
be impossible to carry from the outside food for such a 
long sojourn. Speaking with Mr. Keele, one is forcibly 
struck with the fact that what the technical schools teach 
their students forms but a small part of the equipment of 
the man who would do field work in Northern Canada — 
packing, tracking, hunting, and breaking trail, — each man 
must do his share of these. 

The Keele party on the great watershed, as they trav- 
elled east, crossed two families of Mackenzie River In- 
dians going westward to hunt, on the west side of the 
ridge, the marten and the beaver. It was 32 ° below, and 
cold. The whole families were on the march, a little baby 
tucked in the curve of the sled, and tottering on foot an old, 
old woman, bent and wrinkled and scarcely able to move. 
As the Indians were on their return journey toward the 
Mackenzie in spring, the Keele party saw them again. 
But the old woman was not there. Under some lonely 
mound where snow falls in winter and the leaves of birch 
and cottonwood flutter down in the shrieking winds of 
autumn rest the bones of the old woman, her many jour- 
neys ended. The wearer of a costly fur coat in the glit- 
tering capitals of the Old World seldom stops to conjec- 
ture how much of hardship, patient suffering, and loneli- 
ness go to the making of that luxurious garment. In or- 
der that one might be warmly clad, many have gone cold, 
more than one sad, tired, old head has lain down for the 
last time by the lonely camp-fire. 

307 



THE NEW NORTH 

Sad is the lot of the Indian woman of the North. Fated 
always to play a secondary part in the family drama, it 
is hard to see what of pleasure life holds for her. The 
birth of a girl baby is not attended with joy or thankful- 
ness. From the beginning the little one is pushed into 
the background. The boy babies, even the dogs, have the 
choicer bed at night, and to them are given the best pieces 
of the meat. The little girl is made to feel that she has 
come into a world that has no welcome for her and her 
whole life seems to be an apology. You read it in the 
face of every Indian girl or woman you meet, from the 
shrinking pathetic little figure in the camp to the bent old 
crone, whose upturned face with its sadly acceptive look 
gives you the flicker of a smile. 

Storm-stayed at Wrigley Harbour at the entrance to 
Great Slave Lake, we have some splendid fishing, — jack- 
fish, whitefish, loche, inconnu, "and here and there a lusty 
trout and here and there a grayling." Within an hour I 
get fifteen graylings to my own rod. Collectively they 
weigh just a little over thirty pounds. Swimming against 
the current, they take the fly eagerly ; and one cannot hope 
to land a more gaudy or more gamy fish. Its big dorsal 
fin is rainbow-tinct, the tail an iridescent blue, and the 
scales pure mother-of-pearl. Mr. Keele has had "The 
Complete Angler" for two years with him in the fastnesses, 
and as he helps us prepare the catch for our evening meal 
over the coals, quotes blithely that the grayling is eating fit 
only for "anglers and other honest men." 

The traverse of Great Slave Lake in the teeth of a wind 
is not without its interest, for the new steamer has yet to 
be tried in the waters of what practically amounts to an 

308 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

open sea. She behaves well, and brings us dry-shod into 
Fort Rae. 

We are the first white women who have penetrated to 
Fort Rae, and we afford as much interest to the Indians 
as they afford us. Lone Fort Rae, clinging to the North- 
ern Arm of Great Slave Lake, was noted in the past as a 




The First Type-writer on Great Slave Lake 

"meat-post." It supplied the Mackenzie District with 
dried caribou-meat, and formed an outfitting point for the 
few big game hunters who trended east from here into the 
Barren Grounds seeking the musk-ox. Its foundation 
dates back to some time before the year 1820. We cross 
a bridge of clever Indian construction and sit for a while 
to muse on a flat boulder of primal rock. This stands as 
bell-tower to a quaint bell cast in Rome and bears an in- 

309 



THE NEW NORTH 

scription to some dead and gone Pope. The missionary 
priest over half a century ago paddled in here bringing the 
Gospel to the Dog-Ribs. 

The musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) is a gregarious ani- 
mal which would appear to be a Creator's after-thought, 
— something between an ox and a sheep. The long hair 




The Bell at Fort Rae Mission 

hanging down from the body foreshortens the appearance 
of the legs and gives a c[uaint look to the moving herd. 
The present range of the musk-ox is from Fort Rae north 
to the Arctic and between the meridians of 86° and 125 . 
As it is the most inaccessible game in the world, there 
would seem to be no immediate fear of its being hunted 
to extinction. Toothed like a sheep, footed like an ox, 
tailed like a bear, and maned like a horse, the musk-ox 

310 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

does not circle up wind as the moose and caribou do, but 
travels in any direction he sees fit. Each little herd of 
ten or fifteen bunches up, tails to the middle and horns 
outside, to meet a common danger. The robe of the musk- 
ox is a rich, dark brown streaked with grey, the hair all 
over the body being very long, with a coat of mouse- 




The Musk-ox 



coloured wool at its base. According to the Indians, the 
single young of the musk-ox is born in April. The mother 
buries the calf in the snow as soon as it is born, selecting 
a sheltered place for the cradle. Three days after its 
post-natal burial it is able to frisk with its dam and begin 
to take up the musk-calf's burden. 

We are all day and all night crossing Great Slave Lake 

3ii 



THE NEW NORTH 

from Fort Rae to Fort Resolution. Food values and the 
outgoing cargo of fur are the topics of conversation. 
Years ago a delicate baby at Rae required milk, and with 
trouble and expense a cow was evolved from somewhere 
and deposited at the front door of the H. B. Co. Factor 
there — a cow but no cow-food. All animals must learn to 
be adaptable in the North. She was fed on fish and dried 
meat, lived happily, and produced milk after her kind. 
One of Mr. Keele's men tells of a horse on the Yukon side 
which ate bacon-rinds with a relish. The dogs at Smith 
eat raspberries, climb trees for a succulent moss, and when 
times are really hard become burglars, burgling bacon in 
the night season, and even being ghoulish enough to visit 
Indian cemeteries to pick a bone with the dead. A dog 
in the North Country is surely qualifying for some canine 
heaven in the asphodel meadows. I know of no created 
being who is undergoing a sterner probation than this 
creature forced by man and the exigencies of Fate to 
work like a horse in winter and live on air in summer. 

From Great Slave Lake to Chipewyan the days are 
enlivened with stories from the outgoing traders. We 
learn that when the church was still young, some priests on 
the Mackenzie hungered after flesh-pots in the wilderness 
and wrote to the Pope, asking him whether beaver-tails 
were to be considered fish, or "flesh. Rome evidently was 
not "long" on North American mammals and put itself 
into the class of Nature fakers forever by declaring said 
tails "fish" and not flesh. This is why you can discuss 
beaver-tails on top of the world on Fridays to this present 
and commit no sin. 

The stories give us some idea of the difference between 

312 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

winter and summer travel across Great Slave Lake. Cap- 
tain Mills tells of two Indian women, one old enough to 
have a daughter of forty, who drove a dogsled one hun- 
dred and forty-eight miles from Providence to Rae, in four 
days. The older one walked ahead of the dogs and made 
the trail while the other drove. Coming back, it took them 
five days, and the old woman explained, "We didn't make 
such good time, as we had a man with us." It was her 
son-in-law whom she brought back with her. 

A striking picture is given us of a woman who walked 
alone from Hay River to Province on snowshoes, taking 
thirteen days to do it. She had no matches, and carried 
her fire with her, keeping it alight in a little copper kettle. 
This, of course, necessitated her guarding it very closely 
and stopping to renew the fire from time to time; for if 
the burning wood was once permitted to die down, her 
life in that intense cold would go out with it. 

How cold does it get? Mr. Campbell Young, of our 
little group, says that he has been out when a thermometer 
— one obtained from the U. S. Meteorological Station — 
registered seventy-six degrees below zero, and has worked 
in weather like that. "I've been trapping in that tempera- 
ture, when of course the weather was absolutely still, and 
I tell you I'd rather be out in seventy-six below than to 
cross Smith Portage with the mosquitoes." Mr. Christie, 
of the Keele Survey Party, says, "Last winter I had to 
go out and get a moose for the camp, and on the second 
day I met the Mounted Police boys who told me it had been 
seventy-five below. I had started out when it was quite 
mild, only forty-five below. You know when it is below 
fifty, for then your breath begins to crackle, and that's a 
22 313 



THE NEW NORTH 

sure sign." Mr. John Gaudet says, "I was driving last 
winter on Lesser Slave Lake when it was sixty-four below. 
Yes, it was quite cold." 

At Resolution we see once more our old friend Dr. Sus- 
sex, happy and busied among his Indians. It is just hail 
and farewell. The little "red lemonade" kiddies are the 
first to greet us as we come into Fort Smith, and here every- 
body goes visiting. Mrs. (Archdeacon) Macdonald tells 
us that her grandfather had two wives, and was the father 
of twenty-two children. She says she and her brother are 
glad of this, as it gives them so many friends in all parts 
of the country; and we notice that at every port where 
we stop Mrs. MacDonald has friends to visit — a cousin 
here, and an auntie there. The fancy bag in which you 
carry your calling cards and little friendly gifts up here is 
a "musky-moot"; the more formidable receptacle, which 
gives your friends warning that you may stay a day or two, 
is a "skin-ichi-mun." Visiting a little on our own account, 
we note that we have penetrated to a latitude into which 
the gaudy calendars of the advertiser have not yet made 
their way. Each man, foolish enough here to want a 
calendar, marks out his own on pencilled paper. We come 
across an H. B. Journal of the vintage of 1826 where the 
reckless scribe introduces two Thursdays into one week, 
acknowledging his error in a footnote with the remark, 
"It is not likely that the eye of man will ever read this 
record." 

At Fort Smith we leave the steamer Mackenzie River 
to take passage in the GraJiame from Smith's Landing, 
and once more essay the Mosquito Portage. We find our 
winged friends in fine fettle. Their eyes are not dimmed, 

3H 



SOUTH FROM ARCTIC TO CHIPEWYAN 

their strength not abated. For miles we notice blackened 
and dead stems of young spruce, cut off as if by machinery, 
at a uniform height of two and a half feet from the ground. 
The top of the dead stem shows the depth of the snow 
when the rabbits, running along the surface, had nibbled 
off and eaten the growing spruce. A fur-trader at our 
side says, "While at Fort Macpherson I noticed that the 
ice always melted in the spring in Peel's River before it 
did in the Mackenzie. It would break up in the Peel about 
the Queen's Birthday and begin to go out. Reaching the 
Mackenzie, it came up against a solid mass of unbroken 
ice which sent it back to flood the whole country. It was 
a curious experience to paddle round in a canoe for miles 
and miles where one had set rabbit snares but a few weeks 
before. The poor rabbits themselves were at a loss, for no 
kind monition apprised them of the coming flood. We 
could see whole colonies of them, — each a shipwrecked 
sailor on his own little raft of bark, buffeted here and there 
with the stream and peering out across the swollen waters, 
like Noah's dove, seeking some green thing." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

TO MCMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

r 'Think o' the stories round the camp, the yarns along the track — 
O' Lesser Slave an' Herschel's Isle an' Flynn at Fond du Lac; 
( )f fur an' gun, an' ranch an' run, an' moose and caribou, 
An' bull-dogs eatin' us to death ! Good-bye — good luck to you !" 

Our arrival at Chipewyan is opportune. Honorine 
Daniels, unceremoniously known as 'Norine among her 
friends (and they are legion), is about to join hand and 
fortune with one of the Mercredi boys. 'Norine owns a 
cottage in her own right, and to-night under her roof-tree 
there is to be a wedding-dance. We wait round, hungering 
for an invitation, finally to be told largely, "You don't need 
no invitation, everybody goes." 

We go with the crowd. The room is full to overflowing. 
Babies are deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs 
look in at the window. The air is heavy with mosquitoes 
and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody is too old 
or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy 
Flett each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fid- 
dlers, and these relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, 
beating time with your moccasin on the earthen floor, and 
"calling out" is hard work for one man. There are but 
two kinds of dances, — the Red River jig, and a square 
dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the 
lancers on the father's side and a quadrille on the mother's. 

Endurance is a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A 

316 



TO McMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

man or woman steps into the limelight and commences to 
jig, a dark form in moccasins slips up in front of the 
dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits for 
the survivor and jeers for the quitter. 

It is the square dance that interests us, our attention 
being divided between watching the deft forms in the half 
light and listening to the caller-off. Louie-the-Moose first 
officiates. His eyes look dreamy but there is a general's 
stern tone of command in his words: 

"Ladeez, join de lily-white han's, 
Gents, your black-and-tan ! 
Ladeez, bow ! Gents, bow-wow ! 
Swing 'em as hard's ye can. 

"Swing your corner Lady, 
Then the one you love ! 
Then your corner Lady, 
Then your Turtle Dove !" 

Over and over again Louie reiterates his injunction, to the 
accompaniment of pattering moccasins and a humming 
chorus from door and windows. There are phrases of 
variation, too. We catch the words, "Address your pard- 
ner," "Adaman left" "Show your steps," "Gents walk 
round, and all run away to the west" 

Then Michel Manvil takes hold of the situation. He 
stands up to it, and we hear 

"Ladies round ladies, and gents all so ! 
Ladies round gents, and gents don't go!" 

Why should they, we wonder ! 

The third fiddler is a full-blooded Chipewyan. In some 

317 



THE NEW NORTH 

dancing academy in the woods he has learnt a "call-off" 
all his own, and proud indeed is he of his stunt. We man- 
age to copy it down in its entirety, fighting mosquitoes the 
while and dodging out into the open now and again for 
a little air. 

" 'Slute your ladies ! All together ! 

Ladies opposite, the same — 
Hit the lumber with yer leathers, 

Balance all, and swing yer dame ! 
Bunch the moose-cows in the middle ! 

Circle, stags, and do-si-do — 
Pay attention to the fiddle ! 

Swing her round, an' off you go ! 

"First four forward ! Back to places ! 

Second foller — shuffle back ! 
Now you've got it down to cases — 

Swing 'em till their back-teeth crack! 
Gents, all right, a heel and toeing! 

Swing 'em, kiss 'em if you kin — 
On to next, and keep a-goin' 

Till you hit your pards ag'in ! 

"Gents to centre ; ladies round 'em, 

Form a basket ; balance all ! 
Whirl yer gals to where you found 'em ! 

Promenade around the hall ! 
Balance to yer pards and trot 'em 

Round the circle, double quick ! 
Grab and kiss 'em while you've got 'em — 

Hold 'em to it ; they won't kick !" 

The perspiring musician pushes his instrument into the 
hands of Running Antelope and turns to us with, "There's 
another verse, but I don't always give it." We ask him 
to repeat it for us, but he seems a little at a loss. "It's 

318 



TO McMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

hard to call it out without the fiddle. When yer playin' 
you just spit it out — the words come to you." 

It is August 6th at Chipewyan, and once again we are 
at the parting of the ways. Every one we know is heading 
for "Outside" by way of the steamer Graham c and the 
Athabasca scows. Our own ambition is to make a traverse 
of the great Peace River Country before the snows. We 
have had no mail since last May, and the temptation to 
follow the multitude as far as McMurray in the hope of 
finding letters there is too strong to be resisted. We will 
then return and try to perfect arrangements for the Peace. 

The outgoers are a cosmopolitan and happy "bunch," — 
Major Jarvis, R. N. W. M. P., fur-traders galore, three 
Grey Nuns and a priest, Mr. Wyllie and his family bound 
for the Orkney Islands, fifty-four souls in all, without 
counting the miscellaneous and interesting fraternity down 
on the lower deck among the fur-bundles. 

It is essentially a voyage de luxe. When Mr. Keele 
imagines a place is good, the steamer stops and we all 
gather fossils. When lame James, the steward, our erst- 
while jig-expert, is about to serve coffee, he pokes his head 
over the side and orders the engines stopped that we may 
drink the beverage without spillage. The beardless pros- 
pector buys tinned peaches from the commissariat, opens 
them with a jack-knife and passes them round the deck 
with impartiality and a to-hell-with-the-man-that-works 
smile. Who would envy kings? 

We arrive at McMurray in time for treaty-payment. 
Tethered horses at the tepee-poles, store-dolls for the ba- 
bies, and unmistakable "Outside" millinery prove the pros- 
perity of these Crees, and proves also their proximity to 

3 T 9 



THE NEW NORTH 

Edmonton. One little group looks tattered, out-at-heel, 
and hungry,— a Cree widow presenting her four offspring 
that they may receive the annual payment. The officials 
within the treaty tent declare the youngest baby an illegiti- 
mate child and will pay it no treaty, — it "has no name." 
I catch the anxious look in the mother's eye. Five dollars 
goes a long way when baby bodies have to be fed and 









fwk &F*" KV; «■ ! 









A ]\Ieado\v at McMurray 

clothed. The situation is crucial. Without a sponsor, the 
priest will not name the baby. With no name, it cannot 
draw treaty. I conclude to father the child, as its own 
(un) lawful father will not. My offer to give my name to 
the girlie, after due deliberation of Church and State, is 
accepted. Under the name of Agnes Deans Cameron the 
Cree kiddie is received into the Mother Church and finds 
her place on the list of treaty-receiving Indians — No. 53 
in the McMurray Band. May she follow pleasant trails! 

320 



TO McMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

Back of McMurray lies a lush land. We tread a path 
a full mile in length leading to meadows where, belly-high, 
the horses graze. Every yard of our way is lined with 
raspberry bushes bent with their rich, red burden. 

While the furs are being transferred from the Grahame 
to the scows, the working of our typewriter is a matter of 
much wonderment. Old Paul Fontaine, a half-breed who 
thinks he is a white man, first looks through the door, 
then comes into the dining hall where we are, takes his 
hat off, and watches respectfully. Then, with an air of 
great conviction, "This is the first time I ever see that. It 
is wonderful what man can do — wonderful. There is only 
one thing left to be done now — and that is to put the breath 
of life into a dead body." Solemnly putting on his hat, he 
turns and walks out. 

Mrs. Loutit, another fellow-passenger attracted by the 
click of the machine, comes in and recounts her arts, wild 
and tame. In winter she goes off in dog-cariole, traps 
cross-foxes off her own bat, shoots moose, and smokes the 
hide according to the ancient accepted mode. Coming 
home, she takes the smoked hide and works upon it silk em- 
broidery of a fineness which would be the envy of any 
young ladies' seminary in Europe or America. She weaves 
fantastic belts of beads and sets the fashion for the whole 
North in chef d'ceuvres of the quills of the porcupine. 
She is a most observant "old wife." Watching, fasci- 
nated, the lightning play of the machine, "Much hard that, 
I think, harder than bead-work, eh?" Conquering her 
timidity, she at last glides across to find out how the dick- 
ens when you strike capital "A" at one end of the key- 
board, it finds itself in the writing next to small "o" at the 

321 



THE NEW NORTH 

other end. There is something uncanny about it, and our 
stock goes up. 

We confess to being a little homesick as we wave fare- 
well to the half hundred passengers in the familiar scows 
embarked for their two hundred and thirty-eight mile jour- 
ney up the Athabasca. It will be a tiresome enough trip, 
though, for every foot of the way the big boats will have 




Starting up the Athabasca 

to be tracked (towed) by teams of half-breeds scrambling 
along the shore, now on land, now splashing in the water. 
The party will have the mosquito as companion on the 
sorrowful way and it will take them four weeks to make 
Athabasca Landing, the distance which in the spring we 
dropped down in little over a week. We send letters home, 
and with hand-shaking all round bid farewell to Mr. Wyl- 
lie, the Grey Nuns, and the rest. 

322 



TO McMURRAY AND BACK TO THE PEACE 

Our way back on the Graham c to Chipewyan is not with- 
out adventure. At three o'clock in the afternoon we run 
up hard and fast on a batture! There is no swearing, 
no shouting of orders. The deck-hands from long experi- 




On the Clearwater 



ence know exactly what to do. The engines are reversed 
and, in their efforts, seem to speak Cree, for we catch the 
sound of the familiar "Wuh! Wey!" But it is no go. 
The sun sinks behind the bank, over the tops of the poplars 

3 2 3 



THE NEW NORTH 

floats a faint rosy glow which fades into purple and then 
into black, and we are still there hard and fast. The 
drifting sand piles up against us, and, in scows, the whole 
cargo is removed. The captain throws out a kedge-an- 
chor, and in a mysterious way we pull ourselves off by 
hawsers, as a man lifts himself by his own boot-straps. 

We have head-winds all the way. At four o'clock on 
the morning of August 14th, stress of weather causes us to 
run in under the lee of an island. We tie up at the base 
of some splendid timber. Spruce here will give three feet 
in diameter twenty feet from the ground. With an im- 
provised tape-line I go ashore and measure the base-girth 
of three nearby big poplars (rough-backed). The first 
ran seven feet three inches, the second exactly eight feet, 
and the third eight feet four inches. Within view were 
fifty of these trees which would run the same average, and 
interspersed with them were spruce with a base-girth 
scarcely less. 

Arrived at Chipewyan, we are able to arrange to be 
taken up the Peace in the same little tug Primrose which 
had before carried us so safelv to Fond du Lac. 






CHAPTER XIX 

UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

"What lies ahead no human mind can know, 
To-morrow may bring happiness or woe. 
We cannot carry charts, save the hope that's in our hearts 
As along the unknown trail we blithely go." 

When we leave Chipewyan August 17th, the fall hunt 
of waveys has already begun. We learn afterwards that 
the Loutit boys alone made a bag of sixteen hundred of 
these birds which, salted down, form a considerable part 
of the winter food of the old Fort. Mrs. William John- 
son comes down to see us embark. She has overwhelmed 
us with generous kindness at our every visit to Chipewyan, 
kindness we cannot soon forget. It is a small group which 
now starts out in the little tug on the bosom of the mighty 
Peace,— Major Routledge, R. N. W. M. P., Mr. and Mrs. 
John Gaudet with their two olive-branches "Char-lee" and 
"Se-li-nah," now returning to Lesser Slave Lake from a 
visit to Fort Good Hope, Miss Brown and myself. 

This part of the journey we are to enjoy more keenly 
than all that has gone before. Rising on the western side 
of the Rocky Mountains, the Peace River is the largest 
affluent of the Mackenzie, being already a splendid stream 
when it cuts through that range. With but one break, 
the Peace River affords a nine hundred mile stretch of 
navigation, and we can justly describe the country through 
which it flows as a plateau in which the river has made 

325 



THE NEW NORTH 

for itself a somewhat deep valley. Extensive grassy plains 
border it on both sides, and north of Fort Vermilion coun- 
try of this character extends to the valley of the Hay River. 
Crossing the Quatre Fourches, an offshoot of the Peace at 
the Lake Athabasca edge, we turn our faces due west to 
a land of promise. The Mackenzie River and the banks 
of the Great Slave may some day afford homes to a busy 
and prosperous populace, but there are many fertile and 
more accessible lands to be settled first. With the Peace 
River Country there is no conjecture, for it is merely a 
question of the coming of the railway. Given a connection 
with the world to the south, the district watered by the 
Peace will at once support a vast agrarian population. 
The advance riders are already on the ground. 

It is not our intent to go to the expense of using a 
steamer for our whole journey up the Peace. Scows will 
allow us to proceed more leisurely and to see more as we 
go, so the second day we turn the steamer back and trans- 
fer ourselves and our belongings into a little open craft or 
model-boat The Mee-wah-sin. We have a crew of five 
men, one on the steering-sweep and four to track, and in 
this wise we make our way for three hundred miles up the 
great river to Fort Vermilion. One day we improvise a 
sail and so make fifty miles in a favourable wind, but, with 
this exception, every other mile of the journey is by patient 
towing. 

Incidents are many. The first morning after we turned 
back the little tug, the Kid and I left the slow trackers 
behind and were glad to stretch ourselves in a long fore- 
noon's tramp along the sandy beach. The mosquitoes were 
practically gone and for the first time all summer one 

326 



UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

could really enjoy the woods, where a tang of autumn in 
the air made every breath a tonic draught. Exulting in 
the fact that we were alive, we turned a sharp corner and 
came suddenly face to face with a grey wolf, loping along 
at a swinging pace at the water's edge, muzzle close to the 
ground ! To make the story worth telling, one should have 
something to say of "yawning jaws" and "bloodshot eyes" 
and "haunches trembling for a spring." But this grey 
wolf simply refused to play that part. He took one look 
at us, evidently didn't approve, and turned up from his 
tracks quietly into the cottonwoods above. As we on our 
side had brought neither gun nor camera from the Mee- 
wah-sin, we are unable to punctuate the story by either 
pelt or picture. Sic transit lupus! 

A week out from Chipewyan, where the Swan River 
makes into the Peace, we came one glorious afternoon upon 
a camp of Crees, the family of the Se-zveep-i-gons. They 
had just killed two bears. We bought the skins and a 
large portion of meat from them, and Mrs. Se-zveep-i-gon 
very kindly added to the feast of fat things some high- 
bush cranberries "in a present." As an excuse for listen- 
ing to their soft voices, before we left the camp we asked 
the name of every member of the little group, scratching 
the list down on a piece of birchbark. The Crees evidently 
considered this an official ceremony, for after we had paid 
our score and shaken hands with everybody from Grandpa 
to the latest baby and were well out in mid-stream, Mrs. 
Se-weep-i-gon came running down to the bank to call us 
back. Rowing to the shore we found that she had remem- 
bered one more child whose name she wanted to add to the 
list. She assured us that this one too had a little brass 

327 



THE NEW NORTH 

cross hanging round his neck, so we will be sure to know 
him if we meet him in the woods. 

We lived for the next two days on bear-meat and cran- 
berries. 

So one wonderful day follows another as our little boat 
is towed first against one bank then another of this majestic 




Evening on the Peace 



stream. The forest growth is a marvel. We measure 
one morning three of the spruce trees to which our tent- 
ropes are tied, and get for base measurement six feet eight 
inches, five feet two inches, and five feet respectively. The 
trees averaged ninety feet in height and would give perhaps 
one thousand feet to each tree. The autumn tints on the 
willows and alders of the high river-banks are indescrib- 
ably beautiful. We pass through one hundred miles of 

328 



UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

a veritable field of the cloth of gold. We look out of our 
tent-flaps at night on this living glory, and wake up to it 
again with each new morning sun. 

One Sunday evening at dusk we slip into the Hudson's 
Bay post where the Little Red River makes into the Peace, 
the dear home of Tom Kerr, his Scottish wife, and their 
four bairns. Let me try to give the picture. Tom had 
been off all day cutting meadowgrass, and now wended 
his way home with a load of it in a little Old Country cart 
drawn by a wall-eyed mare. At her side frisked a foal, 
and two great stag-hounds ran back and forward between 
the master and his home by the riverside. Three children 
bounded out to greet their father. "Oh! Daddy, Daddy, 
the red coo broke away from the byre and is far awa on 
the ither side o' the burn !" Here, in a nutshell, you have 
the difference between the Mackenzie River of to-day and 
the Peace River. On the Mackenzie, swarthy forms are 
in evidence, Cree and French is spoken on all sides, there 
are no great fields of waving grain, and the dog is the 
only domestic animal. On the Peace is an essentially 
white race, cows, chickens, trustworthy old nags, por- 
ridge for breakfast, "the tongue that Shakespeare spake," 
rendered in an accent born far ayont the Tweed. Right 
across the mouth of the Little Red River, Tom Kerr has 
a fishing seine. We go down with him to lift it, after the 
cows have been brought back to the narrow path. The 
net yields seven fish and they are of five different species, — 
trout, ling, sucker, jack-fish, and something else that Tom 
calls a "Maria." Daily this net is set, and for three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days every year it furnishes food for 
the family, in summer in the flowing water, and in winter 
23 329 



THE NEW NORTH 

under the ice. You couldn't starve at Little Red River 
if you wanted to. This is one of the most beautiful spots 
in the whole North Countree. Loner after Tom and we 
and Mrs. Tom are under the gowans. and the little Kerrs 




Our Lohsticks on the Peace 



possess the land, there will be populous cities along the 
Peace, and millionaires will plant their summer villas on 
the beauteous spot where we now stand. 

Bidding the bairns good-bye, we press onward on our 
way, Tom Kerr accompanying us. A great honour awaits 

330 



UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

us round the next corner, when the boatmen announce that 
they are going to make us each a lobstick. We land, as 
pleased as Punch over the suggestion. We now know 
what it feels like when the philanthropist of a village takes 
his after-dinner walk through the square and sees the spar- 
rows drinking from the memorial fountain surmounted 
with his own bust, done in copper, life-size. It takes fully 
two hours to trim the trees into significant shape, but 
the beauty of this particular kind of Cook's Tour is that 
you go down when you like and stop when you want to. 
The lobsticks furnished, the men form a circle and dis- 
charge their muskets in salute, and on we go. We learn 
that the ethics of lobsticks is that each of these men, should 
Fate take him past this point again, will salute the lobstick 
just made and send a strong thought across the spruce- 
tops to us. There is a reverse to the shield. Should we, 
at any time before this journey ends, fail to make good, 
the men on the return voyage will cut the lobstick down. 
We are going to make no impertinent enquiries regarding 
the ulterior fate of these family trees. Is it not sufficient 
glory to say, "On the Peace River we had a lobstick"? 
The Chutes of the Peace! These will live forever 
with the Ramparts of the Mackenzie as the two most ma- 
jestic visions which the whole North Land gave us. We 
had not been prepared for that wonderful spectacle which 
met us as we turned a sharp point in the river. The 
torrent roars for four or five hundred yards of rapid 
riverway before coming to its great drop. The rock-reef 
over which the cataract falls extends quite across the 
mighty Peace, here a river of immense width. Measured 
in feet and inches, the Chutes of the Peace must take sec- 

331 



THE NEW NORTH 

ond place to Niagara, yet they impress us as Niagara never 
did. The awesome silence of this land so pregnant with 
possibilities, a land which, though it echo now only the 
quiet foot of the Cree, is so unmistakably a White Man's 
Country, intensifies the sense of majesty and power which 
here takes possession of us. The men talk of the water- 




The Chutes of the Peace 



power furnished by the great falls, and hazard guesses 
of the future economic purposes to which it will be put. 
For our own part, our one wish is to get away from the 
noise of even these subdued voices and in silence feast 
our very souls on this manifestation of the power of God. 
The thoughts that we feel cannot be put into words. Why 
attempt the impossible? 

Our way lies beyond this, and the Chutes have to be 

33^ 



UP THE PEACE TO VERMILION 

overcome. These half-breeds know exactly what to do in 
every emergency which arises. Only one of the men has 
traversed this river before, and he gives orders. We 
strip our little Mee-wah-sin of her temporary masts and 
canvas awning and take out all our belongings. Every- 
body works. A purchase is obtained by throwing a pulley 




Pulling out the Mee-wah-sin 



and rope over a nearby jack-pine, and the boat is pulled 
out bodily from the water. Then the crew drag her along 
the shore well beyond the head of the rapid, and we make 
camp. 

These delicious nights within the tent are memories that 
will remain through all the years to come. It is cool and 
silent and productive of thought. We are selfishly glad 
that fifty people went out by Athabasca ways, leaving to 

333 



THE NEW NORTH 

us all the mighty reaches and pleasant pastures of the 
Peace. The midnight is flooded by a glorious moon, and 
the thoughts born this afternoon of that stupendous fall 
have driven sleep far away. Opening the tent-flap, I 
slip through the camp of sleeping Indians to the edge of 
the fast-flowing stream. The feeling is insistent here 
which has been ever-present since we entered this valley 
of the Peace — here is the home prepared and held in wait- 
ing for the people who are to follow. 

"Listening there, I heard all tremulously 
Footfalls of Autumn passing on her way, 
And in the mellow silence every tree 
Whispered and crooned of hours that are to be. 
Then a soft wind like some small thing astray 
Comes sighing soothingly." 



CHAPTER XX 

VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

"Lofty I stand from each sister land, patient and cheerily wise, 
With the weight of a world of wonder in my quiet, passionless eyes. 
Dreaming of men who will bless me, of women esteeming me good, 
Of children born in my borders, of radiant motherhood, 
Of cities leaping to stature, of fame like a flag unfurled, 
As I pour the tide of my riches in the eager lap of the world." 

— Service. 

It is on August 27th, in the evening, that the crew, all 
slicked up in their Sunday-go-to-meetings, draw us up on 
the beach of the City in the Silences, this Past-in-the-arms- 
of-the-Present, — Vermilion-on-the-Peace. The first thing 
to meet our eye is the red roof of the flour-mill of the H. 
B. Co., a picture of progressiveness set in a living frame 
of golden wheat, the heavy heads nodding to the harvest. 

Vermilion is an old post of the Old Company. Alexan- 
der Mackenzie on his way to the Pacific found people at 
work here far back in 1792. The Vermilion of to-day 
stands a living monument to the initiative faith and hard 
work largely of one man, Mr. Francis D. Wilson, who has 
had charge of H. B. Co. interests here for nineteen years. 
Mr. Wilson found this place a fur-post on the edge of 
civilisation, and he has made of it a commercial, agricul- 
tural, and manufacturing centre. And his example has 
been contagious, for the half-breeds around him have be- 
come farmers, the Indians who traded furs a dozen years 

335 



THE NEW NORTH 

ago now buy harness and ploughs and breach-loading guns 
from The Company, paying for the same with wheat of 
their own growing. 

Vermilion is in latitude 58 30' N., — that is, about four 
hundred miles due north of Edmonton, and on practically 
the same parallel as Stockholm. The flour-mill that we 
now inspect is the most northerly wheat-mill on this conti- 




Thc Flour Mill at Vcrmilion-on-t!ie- Peace 



nent, and it has been running for live years. It is the 
roller process, with a capacity of fifty barrels a day, the 
motor-power being a 40 H.P. Corliss engine. The wheat 
which feeds these rollers is all grown in nearby fields, and 
the resultant flour is consumed by the people of the lone 
posts of the Peace and the lower Mackenzie. Two years 
ago the H. B. Company paid to farmers, all of whom lived 
within a radius of five miles from the mill, the sum of 

33 6 



VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

$27,000 spot cash for their wheat. An electric plant 
lights the mill and fort buildings, affording fifty six- 
candle-power lights. 

Right up to the door of the mill extends the sixty-acre 
wheat-field of the H. B. Company, from which Mr. Wilson 
computes that he will this year thrash two thousand bush- 
els. If the H. B. wheat-field were to sell the H. B. mill 
these two thousand bushels at $1.25 a bushel (the ruling 
Vermilion price), there would be a net profit of $1500, 
after paying all expense of culture, to the credit of one 
branch of Mr. Wilson's commercial institution. For thirty 
years, wheat, oats, barley, and vegetables have been grown 
in Vermilion, not as an experiment, but as regular com- 
mercial crops. Cereals are sown late in April or early in 
May, and the harvest is gathered in August. More than 
once, wheat has matured in eighty-six days from seed- 
sowing to seed-garnering. 

Vermilion farmers boast sulkies and gang-ploughs and 
the latest geared McCormick, Massey-Harris, and Deer- 
ing farm implements, — self-binders and seeders. Every- 
thing is up-to-date. We ourselves counted fifteen self- 
binders at work. And grain is not the whole story. The 
farmers own thoroughbred Ayrshire stock and splendid 
horses. I happened to be at the garden of the Church of 
England Mission when the potato-crop was being har- 
vested, and found that seven bags of seed planted in the 
middle of May produced one hundred bags by the end of 
August. Five potatoes that I gathered haphazard from 
one heap weighed exactly five and one-half pounds. I pho- 
tographed and weighed a collection of vegetables grown 
by Robert Jones on the Dominion Experimental Farm. 

337 



THE NEW NORTH 

One cauliflower weighed eight pounds, half a dozen tur- 
nips weighed nine pounds each, and twenty table beets 
would easily average six pounds each. The carrots and 




Articles Made by Indians 

A — Wall-pocket of white deerskin, embroidered in silk-work, and bordered with ermine — 
the work of a Cree woman at Yermilion-on-the-Peace. 

B — Gloves of white deerskin embroidered in silk, the work of a Slavi woman on the 
Liard River (a branch of the Mackenzie). 

C, 1), E, F, G, H, I — Moccasins as worn respectively by the Crees, Chipewyans, Slavis, 
Dog-Ribs, Yellow-Knives, Loucheux — all the work of the women. 

J. — Flour bag from the mill at Yermilion-on-the-Peace, the most northerly flour-mill in 
America. 

K — Sinew, from close to the spine of the moose — used by the women of the North in- 
stead of thread. 

L — Very valuable net of willow-bark made by an old squaw at Fort Resolution. This 
is almost a lost art, and harks back to the pre-string days. 

M — The " crooked knife " or knife of the country. 

N — Match-box made from a copper kettle by an old Beaver Indian at Fort Yermilion-on- 
the-Peace. 

O — Babiche, or rawhide of the moose or caribou — "the iron of the country." 

onions were sown in the open in mid-May and were as 
inviting specimens as I have ever seen. Tomatoes rip- 
ened in the open air on this farm on July 13th. Peas, 

338 



VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

sown on May 23rd and gathered on August 12th, weighed 
sixty-four pounds to the bushel. Experimental plots of 
turnips gave sixteen tons to the acre, and white carrots 
twelve tons. Apple-trees and roses we found flourishing 
on this farm, with twenty-five varieties of red, black, and 
white currants. The wheat story is of compelling inter- 




The Hudson's Bay Store 

est. Preston wheat, sown on May 6th and cut on August 
22nd, weighed sixty-four pounds to the bushel; Ladoga 
wheat, sown on the last day of April and cut on September 
5th, ran sixty-four pounds to the bushel also, and early 
Riga weighed sixty-three pounds. In the garden of the 
R. C. Mission we were presented with splendid specimens 
of ripened corn and with three cucumbers grown in the 
open air, which weighed over a pound each. 

Vermilion is the centre of prairie and rolling timber- 

339 



( 



THE NEW NORTH 

land greater in extent than the whole of Belgium. There 
are probably a million acres of land immediately tributary 
to the place, all capable of producing crops like those cited. 
Within a radius of ten miles of the H. B. post there are 
living now five hundred people of whom perhaps fifty are 
white. They all to some extent cultivate the soil, varying 
their farm operations by hunting, trapping, and freight- 
ing. The settlement boasts two churches, two mission 
schools, and two trading stores, — a happy, prosperous, and 
very progressive community. Everything in the place 
points to this conclusion. 

The H. B. Company here, in addition to buying beaver- 
skins and growing $1.25 wheat and grinding flour and 
importing big red binders, breaks the monotony by run- 
ning a sawmill and building modern steamboats. This 
sawmill turned out all the lumber for the new steamer 
Peace River, built here four years ago of native timber. 
She is a hundred and ten-foot stern-wheeler with twenty- 
two-foot beam, drawing two and a half feet and carrying 
forty tons burden. She can accommodate thirty passen- 
gers in comfortable cabins, and when going with the cur- 
rent, makes fifteen knots an hour. The sawmill which 
turned out the timbers for this boat has a capacity of fif- 
teen thousand feet a day. 

Within this mill I took, at random, the record sheet of 
one raft of one man's logs for the spring of 1906, cut in 
the immediate vicinity of Vermilion and floated along the 
Peace to the mill. Edmond Paul's logs in one raft gave a 
total of two hundred and eighty-eight logs, which cut at 
the mill 27,029 board feet of lumber. The biggest log 
in this raft was a twelve-foot log with twenty-six inches 

340 



VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

diameter at the small end, which cut three hundred and 
sixty-three feet of lumber. 

Vermilion in its soil fertility, its modernism, culture, and 
arrived-ness is a source of recurring marvel and pleasure. 
If a handful of people four hundred miles from a railway, 
as the crow flies, and seven hundred miles by actual prac- 
ticable trails, can accomplish what has been done, into 
what status of producing- activity will this whole country 
spring when it is given rail communication with the plains- 
people to the south? 

Waiting for steamboat connection, we are for weeks 
in this glorious autumn weather, guests in the hospitable 
home of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson. Can we ever forget the 
generous kindness extended to us within these walls? 
Months of travel in open scows, sleeping on the ground, 
and stretching out in blankets on the decks of little tugs 
have prepared us to enjoy to the full the comforts of a 
cultured home. It is a modern house, with beds of old- 
fashioned pansies and sweet-Williams and rows of holly- 
hocks on all sides. The upper verandah affords a view 
of the Peace, here fully a mile in width, of incomparable 
beauty. To the visitor who steps over its threshold, Mr. 
Wilson's library indicates at once the reading man and 
the clever artificer. Scientific works of reference, good 
pictures, the latest magazines, certainly look inviting to 
ragged travellers who have opened no books, save those of 
nature and human-nature, for five long months. The 
office furniture, hand-made of native tamarack and birch, 
is Mr. Wilson's individual work in both design and execu- 
tion. Admiring the outcome of hand and head, we get 
also a glimpse of a warm heart, for we are quick to notice 

34i 



THE NEW NORTH 

that all these carefully-filed magazines and papers are 
available for reference to any one in the settlement, 
whether fort employe or not, who cares to come in here 
for a quiet hour to read. 

Kipling says, "You couldn't pack a Broadwood half a 
mile," but the Wilson home gives the lie direct to this 
blithe line. In a corner of the drawing-room stands an 
old-fashioned piano with a history. The honourable an- 
cestress of all the modern square pianos and baby-grands 
of Canada, this little instrument came long years ago in the 
hold of a sailing ship to Hudson Bay, and by interior 
waterways was carried by portage and York-boat into 
Winnipeg, and subsequently into Edmonton. It carries 
on it the name of John Broadwood & Sons, London. Mrs. 
Wilson tells us that when she was little it was carried by 
the boys from house to house on the prairies to do duty 
wherever there was a social dance. The ghost of the old 
thing has much quiet here in Vermilion to think of the 
pretty girls in their short sleeves and muslin frocks who 
once trod Sir Rogers to its sweet strains. 

Mrs. Wilson, the grand-daughter of Peter Warren 
Dease, the explorer, and the daughter of late Chief Factor 
Clarke of the H. B. Co., has put in a life of loving service 
among the people of Vermilion. Her knowledge of medi- 
cine and her devoted attention and nursing, extended in 
the hour of need alike to Indians and whites, has saved 
the life of many a mother and child; for doctors and pro- 
fessional nurses are unknown in Vermilion. These are 
the pioneer days, when interdependence breeds neighbourly 
kindness. 

Everything on a Vermilion dinner-table is produced in 

342 



VERMILION-ON-THE-PEACE 

the country, with the exception only of tea, coffee, sugar, 
and pepper. The country furnishes beef, pork, and fowl 
all locally matured; home-cured ham and bacon; every 
known variety of hardy and tender vegetables ; home-made 
butter; bread made from flour grown and ground on the 




Papillon, a Beaver Brave 

premises ; pies whose four constituents — flour, lard, butter 
and fruit — are products of the country ; home-made cheese ; 
wild honey; home-made wines; splendid fish caught from 
the Peace, and a bewildering variety of wild game — moose, 
caribou, venison, grouse, brant, wild geese, canvas-backs, 
and mallards. Wild berries furnish jams and conserves 

343 



THE NEW NORTH 

of a dozen different kinds, such as raspberry, black cur- 
rant, strawberry, blackberry, cranberry, blueberry, and 
saskatoon. The salt comes from Slave River, and sugar 
could very readily be produced from Vermilion beets if 
there should arise a market. What more would you? 
The Vermilionese on his fertile acres is as independent of 
the world outside as is the Eskimo in his Arctic igloo. 
The farm of Sheridan Lawrence, exhibiting its wide- 
stretching wheat-fields, some heads of which counted sev- 
enty-one kernels, with its patches of one-pound potatoes, 
twelve-foot sunflowers, and its quiverful of happy, tow- 
headed children, gives as sweet a picture of Canadian 
thrift and happiness as one would wish to see. Indeed, 
happiness seems to be the keynote of Vermilion, whether 
we seek it within the fort walls of the H. B. Co., on the 
fat acres of the farmers, or within the folds of Protestant 
or Roman Mission. 

We carry away with us two pictures, that we like to 
cherish, of the convent kiddies of Vermilion. The first 
thing we saw when we peered round a corner of this 
old-fashioned building was the bright face of Sister 
Thomas of Canterbury playing see-saw with a dozen wide- 
grinning Slavi babies. When the morning came when we 
were to bid reluctant good-bye to Vermilion and all its 
spontaneous kindness, the last sight that met our eyes be- 
fore we turned the corner of the Peace was the whole con- 
vent force of Vermilion perched high on stumps and fence- 
rails, wishing us bon voyage with fluttering pocket-hand- 
kerchiefs, while Sister Thomas of Canterbury, on a lad- 
der, surmounted the crowd and waved her farewells with 
a table-cloth. 

344 



CHAPTER XXI 

FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

" Tis a summer such as broods 
O'er enchanted solitudes, 

Where the hands of Fancy lead us through voluptu- 
ary moods, 
And with lavish love outpours 
All the wealth of out-of-doors." 

— James IVhitcomb Riley. 

On September 15th we leave Vermilion, leave, too, on 
the beach the little Mee-wah-sin, and in the tiny tug Mes- 




Going to School in Winter 



senger of the H. B. Company pass on up the Peace. By 
night we tent on the banks, by day we puff along between 
painted banks of gold and crimson, while all around us 
24 345 



THE NEW NORTH 

the air is a pungent tonic, and overhead the southward- 
passing cranes are flying. 

Little Se-li-nah, the sturdiest of travelling companions 
through months of wandering over portage and up river, 
has won our unbounded respect and created for herself a 
warm place in every heart. Se-li-nah, though, makes it 
impossible for us to pose as brave endurers of hardships. 
Each night and morning she carries her little pack on and 
off shore, takes her share of pot-luck at meat-su, and is 
never cross. Bless the kiddie! If ablutions seem to her 
a work of supererogation and our daily play of toothbrush 
furnishes all the fascination of the unknown, still hers is 
the right stuff for pioneer lands and she has lessons to 
teach us in pluck and endurance. 

The first night out from Vermilion we made camp after 
dark and, on waking, found that in our blankets we had 
lain directly across four new bear-tracks. Moose-tracks 
are plentiful at every stopping-place, so we see to it that 
both guns and camera are primed. At eight next morning 
we pass Not-in-a-gu Seepee. Some Indians hail us, ask- 
ing for tea, and from these we learn that ten families who 
made this their winter camp last season bagged eighty 
moose among them. 

At half-past two our chance came. To get away from 
the noise of the engine, the Kid and I had moved our work 
directly after breakfast to a flour-laden scow that we had 
in tow, and I was dictating this story to the machine when 
the sharp eyes of Showan in the distance spied a moose. 
He was on the shore cropping willows. It had been gen- 
erously agreed that if opportunity offered at a moose the 
shot was to be mine, so in excited whispers the news is 

34-6 



FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

telegraphed to our end of the scow and my rifle is handed 
up. The fireman slows up on the engine, but still its throb- 
bing sounds distressingly loud as we creep up on the feed- 
ing moose and scan the lay of the land, calculating his 
chances of escape. The banks are high, — perhaps one 
hundred and fifty feet — and sheer, but there are two gul- 
lies which afford runway to the bench above. What an 




My Premier Moose 

ungainly creature he looks as we draw in nearer, all legs 
and clumsy head, — a regular grasshopper on stilts ! He 
reminds me of nothing so much as those animals we make 
for the baby by sticking four matches into a sweet biscuit. 
And now at last he sees us. I fire, and the shot just grazes 
his spine. Will he take to a gully? No, he plunges into 
the river instead and we follow him up in the little tug. 
One more shot is effective, and I have killed my premier 

347 



THE NEW NORTH 

moose. "Cruel !" you say. Well, just you live from mid- 
May to mid-September without fresh meat, as, with the 
exception of Vermilion's flesh-pots, we have done, and then 
find out if you would fly in the face of Providence when 
the Red Gods send you a young moose! To illuminate 
the problem I transcribe the menu of one sample week of 
the summer. 

This is the literal "dope sheet" of the camp cook : 

Monday: — Dried caribou and rice. 

Tuesday: — Salt fish and prunes. 

Wednesday: — Mess-pork and dried peaches. 

TJiursday: — Salt horse and macaroni. 

Friday: — Sow-belly and bannock. 

Saturday: — Blue-fish and beans. 

Sunday: — Repeat. 

Dragged ashore, the moose proved to be a male of two 
prongs, about eighteen months old, and weighed perhaps 
four or five hundred pounds. A full-grown moose of this 
country will sometimes dress half a ton. We are to learn 
that there are many viewpoints from which to approach 
a moose. The Kid wants its photograph, Chiboo and Mrs. 
Gaudet each eloquently argue for the skin, the rest of us 
are gross enough to want to eat it, and Se-li-nah, looking 
demurely of! into the pines, murmurs gently in Cree, "Mar- 
row is nice." Poor young stripling of the Royal House 
of Moose, you could not have fallen into more apprecia- 
tive hands ! 

The first thing Baptiste does is to plunge his penknife 
into the back to see how deep the fat is. We had noticed 
this testing process before. A bunch of feathers is always 
plucked off the new-killed bird that one can immediately 

348 



FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

gauge the gastronomic niche at which to set one's waiting 
stomach. No more voyaging to-night. The moose is 
cleaned and skinned. Mrs. Gaudet draws the skin. I 
claim the head. A little Indian boy, who with his mother 
had been added to our ship's crew at Carcajou Point, ap- 
propriates the kidneys, which he proceeds to roast in the 
ashes. Ten-year-old Bill evidently likes his devilled kid- 




Beaver Camp, on Paddle River 



neys rare, for within three minutes we see him prancing 
round the camp, nibbling his dripping dainty from the 
point of an impaling stick. 

Having sat round the barbecue half the night, we pull 
out late the next morning. And now, apprised by moc- 
casin telegraph, we are all on the qui vive to catch sight 
of a floating bride. A fur-trader attached to "The French 
Company" at Vermilion has been out on six months' leave 
and is bringing in a bride from Paris. We are to expect 

349 



THE NEW NORTH 

them to cross our course on a raft, floating in with the 
current of the Peace as we make our way upstream. We 
see the raft. All is excitement. We direct the steersman 
to draw close in, and the men prime their rifles for a salute. 
She is not visible, — floating brides on the Peace shrink 
evidently from being the cynosure of passing eyes. Our 
men fire their salute, the steersman on the raft looks puz- 
zled when we, smiling our sympathy, peer over the edge 
of his craft, and see, instead of the Parisian bride, — a load 
of Poland pigs for Vermilion! It is the wrong raft. 
The real bride passes us in the gloaming ten hours 
later, when it is too dark to get a satisfactory photo- 
graph ! 

On the evening of September 22nd we arrive at Peace 
River Crossing, or Peace River Landing, just a week out 
from Vermilion. Our course from there has been almost 
due south. We turn the little Messenger back here and 
regretfully bid good-bye to our staunch and friendly boat- 
men. No people in the world could be pleasanter to travel 
with than these splendid men of the North. Indefati- 
gable and ready for any emergency, they know their busi- 
ness and are always master of the situation; moreover, 
nature has dowered them with an intuitive delicacy as 
rare as it is pleasing. Through all these weeks, intensely 
interested as they are in everything that is new, never for 
a moment have they intruded upon us or our doings. At 
night there is not a man of them who will not walk a quar- 
ter of a mile through the woods rather than pass between 
our occupied tent and the camp fire. But let us offer to 
show them pictures or to explain the workings of the 
camera or the typewriter and it is a different story, for then 

350 



FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

every man Jack drops his oar or tump-line and rushes to 
our side like an excited schoolboy. 

Peace River Crossing is in latitude 56 N. and longitude 
117 20' W. From that far-off day in spring when we 
first touched the Clearwater we have been following in the 
historic footprints of Sir Alexander Mackenzie. We now 
take a day off, with the object of locating Mackenzie's last 
camp on the Peace, which he reached in 1792 and from 
which, in the spring of 1793, he started west across the 
map seeking an unknown route to the Pacific Ocean. We 
find the remains of that camp. It is in the corner of a po- 
tato-field a little way beyond Peace River Crossing and on 
the opposite side of the river. Only the foundations of the 
walls are left and the crumbling bricks of two old chim- 
neys. Mackenzie was the first man to cross the continent 
from sea to sea north of the latitude of Mexico, and it was 
from this point where we stand that he launched his am- 
bitious canoe. There is no more historic spot on the con- 
tinent than that on which we stand this September day, 
and as yet it is all unmarked of commemorative stone or 
recording tablet. The lost camp had never been photo- 
graphed until we brought our inquisitive camera to bear 
upon it. 

I stoop and pluck from where it nods behind the old 
chimney a wild larkspur, and as I half-mechanically count 
its forty-two seed-pods, I try hard to throw back my 
thoughts to the year 1792, — one hundred and sixteen years. 
It is a far call ! Canada is tardy in her recognition of her 
early builders of Empire. Our cousins to the south would 
appear to be more appreciative. In song and story and by 
a memorial World's Fair the people of the United States 

351 



THE NEW NORTH 

have honoured the discoveries of Lewis and Clark, but 
Mackenzie crossed the continent a full dozen years in ad- 
vance of these explorers. 




The Site of old Fort McLeod 



Our mind feels back across the centuries to little-known 
Montreal where, amid the bales of peltries and the trading- 
trinkets of the Fur Company, a hidden voice is speaking 
and a young man listens. That young man is Alexander 

352 



FORT VERMILION TO LESSER SLAVE 

Mackenzie, a self-taught Scot, a Canadian bourgeois. In 
the noisy midday clatter of the fort he hears the voice, 
in the waking hours of dawn and "when evening shuts the 
deed off, calls the glory from the grey." He cannot get 
away from that haunting challenge, he would not if he 
could. There are interminable changes rung on the ever- 
lasting whisper, but its burden is ever the same. 

"Something lost behind the Ranges, 
Lost and waiting for you: Go!" 

No more might it satisfy him to out-do his competitors 
and carry back to Grand Portage canoes overflowing with 
furs. We have seen how the doughty and determined Scot 
followed to the Arctic the river which now bears his name. 
It gives us the measure of the man to know that the 
thought uppermost in the mind of Mackenzie returning 
from the Arctic was not pride in the deed accomplished 
but a realization of his limitations in astronomical knowl- 
edge. He would go back to Britain and study stars for 
a time instead of skins, planets for peltries. And back he 
went in 1791. His first achievement had but whetted his 
ambition. It was of a Western Sea that he had greatly 
dreamed among the bearskins and beavers of Montreal, 
and to that ocean which split its waves "somewhere" far 
beyond the snow crests of the Rockies he would go. With 
this strong determination he returned from Scotland, made 
toilsome way to Fort Chipewyan and pressed up the Peace 
to make the camp among whose ruins we stand. The 
breaking of the spring ice of 1793 sent him forth on the 
quest of that Northwest Passage by Land. 

353 



THE NEW NORTH 

"O Young Mariner, 
Down to the harbor call your companions, 
Launch your vessel, and crowd your canvas, 
And, ere it vanishes over the margin, 
After it. Follow it. Follow the Gleam !" 

We have not time to recount the chapters of the story, 
to name the streams ascended, the boiling gorges passed, 
the discontent allayed, the encouragement given, the lonely 
night-watches when the leader himself looked for comfort 
to his new-found stars. The Fraser was discovered, 
traced for a while; and then, striking westward, Macken- 
zie heard the beat of the surf upon the rocks, and came 
out from among the pines to the silver Pacific sparkling 
in the sun. It was a sweet day in summer's prime, and 
as the gulls cried overhead and the sun mixed scent of sea- 
weed with balsam breath from in-shore, we can imagine 
but not divine the feelings of that brave man who had 
thrown himself face-downward on the sand and from 
whose presence the awed companions stole silently away. 
We remember the words of another builder of Empire, — 

"Anybody might have found it, 
But God's whisper came to me." 



CHAPTER XXII 

PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE LAKE 

"A haze on the far horizon. 
The infinite tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields. 
And the wild geese sailing high, — 
And all over upland and lowland 

The charm of the goldenrod. 
Some of us call it Autumn, 
And others call it God." 

—IV. H. Carruth. 

At Peace River Crossing we say good-bye to the Gau- 
dets, whose home is here. While they have been making 
a little summer jaunt to Fort Good Hope under the Arctic 
Circle the garden-seeds they sowed before they left have 
not been idle. Mr. Gaudet shows us a pumpkin which 
weighs twenty-five pounds, a squash of the same weight, 
and citron melons, which weigh over ten pounds each. 

To those who continue up the Peace from here, three 
great open prairies present themselves: the Spirit River 
Prairie, the Grande Prairie, and the Pouce Coupe. The 
Spirit River Prairie spreads over a thousand square miles 
of splendid soil, sandy loam on a subsoil of clay. Wood 
and water are plentiful, horses winter in the open, and 
crops here have never been damaged by frost. 

Trending south from the H. B. post of Dunvegan, one 
reaches the Grande Prairie by passing through the fertile 
belt of Spirit River. Grande Prairie is a loose term given 

355 



THE NEW NORTH 

to an area of thirty-five hundred square miles of black- 
loam country. Settlers in this section never feed their cat- 
tle longer than six weeks each winter. 

The Pouce Coupe would seem perhaps the most attrac- 
tive of all the Peace River Prairies. The natural vegeta- 
tion on its one thousand acres proves the soil exceedingly 
rich. Pea-vine and blue- joint hide a horse here in mid- 




Jean Batise, the Pilot on the Peace 

August, and berry-vines show no touch of frost at mid- 
September. Shrub-grown knolls dot the rolling surface, 
while lakes and streams give abundant water. Through 
three mountain-passes the Chinook drifts in, tempering 
everything it touches and making it possible for Indians 
and pack-train men to winter their horses here without any 
trouble on the naturally-cured grasses. They drive the 
animals in at the end of autumn, and the horses come out 

356 



PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE 

in the spring hardened and fit for work. This is a para- 
dise for wild animals. Rabbits seek the pea-vine, the 
lynx and the fox follow the rabbits, and the bear finds here 
the berries that tickle his palate, — blackberries, strawber- 
ries, cherries, cranberries, willow-berries, and saskatoons. 
On September 24th we engage waggons to carry our 
dunnage a hundred miles south from Peace River Crossing 




Fort Dunvegan on the Peace 



to Lesser Slave Lake. This stands out in our memory as 
one of the most beautiful bits of the whole ten thousand 
miles that we travelled. With the cool mornings and 
evenings and the suggestion of frost in the air it is ideal 
walking and we tramp almost all of the hundred miles, 
letting the waggons overtake us at meal-times and waiting 
for them again when it is time to camp. The trail leads 
us through a rolling, lightly-wooded country, with many 
streams and open glades. At every lake and runway we 

357 



THE NEW NORTH 

flush clucks and wild-fowl, like us bound south, and like us, 
too, loath to leave the golden fulness of this land. The 
sun is strong, the stretch of woods on each side of the trail 
is a painter's palette splotched with vivid golds, greens, 
crimsons, and tawny russets. Robins, little moose-birds, 
and saucy whiskey-jacks are fairly revelling in the berries, 
crowding close to us, disputing the very berry we are pop- 
ping into our mouths. Spring lingers late in this Land 
of Promise. Strawberry blossoms are around us every- 
where, nestling amid the ripened fruit, and on September 
25th in latitude 56 N. I pluck a little pasque-flower, one 
beautiful belated anemone. 

Next evening's tramp brings to view the little settlement 
of Lesser Slave, and we sigh to realise ourselves another 
one hundred miles nearer civilisation, — the ''civilisation" 
of Chicago! A strong desire possesses us to about-face 
and back to the woods again. 

It is upon all the excitement of the Lesser Slave potato- 
harvest that we intrude. Every one is busy piling pota- 
toes in heaps, putting them into sacks, wheel-barrowing 
the bags into winter storage, — men, women, children, cas- 
socked priests, and nuns surrounded by their chattering 
flocks. A noise in the upper air causes everyone to stop 
work. We look up, to count a flock of high-sailing 
cranes floating far to the south, — one hundred and fifty- 
three of them. The observers make a pretty picture, — 
the rigid figures and uplifted faces of the monks, the nuns 
with their up-kilted skirts, the happy children. "It is the 
Man with the Hoe," I murmur. "Yes," assents the Kid, 
"and The Angelns at Lesser Slave." 

We are the guests at Hudson's Bay House of Mr. and 

358 



PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE 

Mrs. George Harvey. Mrs. Harvey is one of the best 
horsewomen in the North, and it is clear delight, with her 
as pilot, to find ourselves once more in the "horse latitudes" 
— though, indeed, it is no belt of calms where Mrs. Harvey 
leads. The only real accident of the summer writes itself 
on this page. The day after our arrival we were inconti- 
nently spilled from a democrat and dragged half a mile 




Fort St. John on the Peace 

through the muskeg, being saved only by Mrs. Harvey's 
splendid pluck and presence of mind. Climbing along the 
pole, this cool-nerved lady gathered up the lost lines, sawed 
the horses' mouths, and pulled our craft into the desired 
haven, incidentally in the act making possible the writing 
of this "immortal work" ! 

Things are more on the move here than elsewhere we 
have been. Everybody rides, from grandmothers to two 
years' babies, and everybody handles a gun. Duck-shoot- 

359 



THE NEW NORTH 

ing is at its height, for the wild-fowl linger to feed on 
their way south at Lesser Slave as they do at Chipevvyan. 
Mr. Harvey and his assistants, Old Country boys, some 
of whom have seen service in Britain's foreign wars, are 
all wing-shots, and there is friendly rivalry among them 
regarding the season's scores. The ducks are shot at 




Where King Was Arrested 



dusk. After office hours we watch each little group, 
equipped with the latest capers in London and Dublin sport- 
ing-irons, hie off to the vantage-points in the marshes. On 
the walls of the office each resultant bag is verified and 
recorded, the figures being kept from year to year. To 
make good at Lesser Slave, if you are a man you must 
ride well, shoot straight, honour The Company, and other- 

360 



PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE 

wise play the game. This is the healthy standard Mr. 
TIarvey sets and follows himself. 

There is much to tempt the camera here. We see the 
identical shack in which Sergeant Anderson made his ar- 
rest of the murderer King, and, driving along a mile to 
the garden of the R. C. Mission, we photograph giant cab- 
bages, one of which weighs full' forty pounds. 




Alec Kennedy with His Two Sons 



By special good luck we run across Alec Kennedy, — tall, 
straight, fifty-seven or thereabouts, with a face that shows 
the mixing of Scotch blood with Sioux. On his coat shine 
two African Service medals, one granted him by the Brit- 
ish and one by the Egyptian government. His grand- 
father was one of those Selkirk Scots who colonised the 
Red River a century ago, but, in Kennedy, Indian blood 
far outweighs the white. He married a full-blood and has 
several splendid-looking children. At the time of Riel's 
first half-breed rising, Kennedy's services attracted the no- 
25 361 



THE NEW NORTH 

tice of Sir Garnet Wolseley. When, in 1844, Wolseley 
was detailed to lead an expedition for the relief of Chinese 
Gordon, then at Khartoum, he had to think of the details of 
river-transportation, and the flat-boats of the Nile recalled 
the Canadian batteaux and Alec Kennedy. It is a far call 
from the Lesser Slave to the Nile, but men who can navi- 
gate boats and manage crews are rare, and the outcome 
was that this Scots-Sioux, — strong, silent, faithful, was 
ordered to collect a party of Canadian voyageurs and re- 
port to the Commander-in-Chief. Reaching Egypt, Ken- 
nedy was at once attached to a young officer, Kitchener, 
who, too, was later to win his spurs. Round the camp- 
fire we induce Alec Kennedy, between puffs from a black 
pipe, to tell in short ruminating sentences of the hansoms 
slurring over London mud, of the yellow Nile, of Africa's 
big game, of the camel that takes the place of the moose, 
of the swart Arabs and Egyptians. But of his own deeds 
of derring-do Alec has little to say. It was of men such 
as Kennedy that Kipling warns, "Do not expect him to 
speak, has he not done the deed?" 

Lesser Slave holds many a person with a history behind 
him. As a young fellow of the H. B. Co. says, "It's 
beastly bad form to ask any man who comes in here any- 
thing about his former history. If he wants to be a wil- 
ful-missing, that's his privilege." However, fate has 
thrown in our way one person whom we will interview, 
bad form or not. From Chipewyan up the Peace we have 
traced the story of Louise the Wetigo, taking down at 
different posts, from the lips of nineteen different people, 
more or less garbled chapters of it. As great good luck 
will have it, Louise herself has to-day come in to within 

362 



PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE 

six miles of Lesser Slave. YVe soon make connection with 
her and at the same time with Archdeacon and Mrs. Scott, 
who are closely identified with the weird story. 

Stripped of the horrible details, these are the related 
facts. Twenty years ago Louise was a bride of seventeen. 
With her sister, aged eighteen, their respective husbands, 




Cannibal Louise, Her Little Girl, and Miss Cameron 

father, mother, sisters, little brothers and cousins, en 
famille, they pitched off from Little Red River to make 
winter camp in the woods. The camp made, all the 
younger men set off to hunt meat for the others. Neither 
moose nor caribou was seen, and on and on they went. 
They shot one small beaver and ate it, and the white earth 
afforded no further food. Starving and hopeless, they 
stumbled on, finally to fall into a camp of stranger Indians, 

3 6 3 



THE NEW NORTH 

who nursed them back slowly through the winter to sane 
strength. 

How about their families, the camp of waiting ones 
left behind in the woods? With no one to hunt for 
them, gaunt Famine held these in her clutch. Grandmoth- 
ers' faces grew weary, the sharpened eyes of the little 
children peered daily across the snow waiting, watching, 
for the hunters who were to bring food. The fires were 
made in readiness, but no meat came to those hanging ket- 
tles. Old and feeble, young and helpless, alike became 
weaker as they watched. One by one they died. The 
survivors ate of the dead bodies. At last, of the nineteen 
souls, Louise and her sister alone lived. Wild-eyed and 
starving, holding one old musket between them, these two 
sisters stumbled off together to try to make Little Red 
River, leaving behind them in the woods the most awful 
experience that two human beings could share. At the 
nightly camps each feared the other and neither dared to 
sleep. The third night out, thinking that Louise slept, 
the sister levelled the gun at her stooping companion, but 
Louise was watching through burnt holes in the canvas. 
The next day brought no food, and the nightly watch was 
repeated. Then the sister died. How she died God and 
the watching stars alone know. Some say that Louise 
carried with her a piece of her sister's flesh as food when 
at last she staggered into Red River. This Louise denies, 
but admits freely the cannibalism of the winter's camp. 

Cannibalism ! As we use this term we regret the paucity 
of a language which forces us, in describing the extremity 
of Louise, to use the same word which we apply to those 
inhuman monsters who, of their own volition, choose the 

364 



PEACE RIVER CROSSING TO LESSER SLAVE 

flesh of man for food. It is an awful story. Human im- 
agination and sympathy utterly fail to give a conception of 
the agony undergone by these poor creatures — women and 
children with affections like our own — shut for the greater 
part of a winter within that cruel camp of death ! 

Coming back to the world of men and women, Louise 
was for years a recluse, shunned of all Indians as a 
"Wetigo" or "Cannibal." A friend was raised up to her 
in the person of Mrs. Scott, the wife of Archdeacon Scott 
who took her in and made her a member of their household. 
Years passed, and Louise married a man whose Cree name 
is The-Man-Who-Looks-Like-Silver. To this marriage a 
little child has been born. 

As we arrange the little group for a photograph, the 
mother tenderly caresses the child and the father smiles 
kindly upon both. Louise the Cannibal ! When we look 
on our joint picture, it might be somewhat difficult to dis- 
tinguish the writer from the Indian woman. She is "even 
as you and me." 



CHAPTER XXIII 

LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 

"I hear the tread of Nations yet to be, 
The first low wash of waves where soon shall roll a human sea." 

Taking passage on the steamer Northern Light, we leave 
the settlement of Lesser Slave Lake, this world-in-small, 




A Peace River Pioneer 



on the first clay of October, and, from here to Athabasca 
Landing, travel in company with Mr. J. K. Cornwall, Pres- 
ident of the Northern Transportation Company. Between 

3 66 



LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 

the time of our journey and this writing, Mr. Cornwall 
has been returned as Member of the Alberta Legislature 
for the district we are now traversing. He certainly 
knows his constituency better than most representatives 
do. There is scarcely a mile of these unmapped ways that 
he has not tramped alone ; not an Indian guide in the North 
can last with "Jim" for a week, in summer, or on snow- 
shoes. When some Lesser Slave half-breeds were told 
that Mr. Cornwall was going to run for the legislature 
against Allie Brick, one of them said, "Jiru wins. Allie 
Brick can't run. Not much fun in that race. No man 
on Peace River can run like Jim." 

Mr. Cornwall's pronouncement on the North Country 
can be taken as authoritative. He says, "Practically all 
the timber of any commercial value between the Great 
Lakes and the Rocky Mountains is in these northern wa- 
tersheds. This timber will be a very important factor in 
the coming development of Prairie Canada to the south, 
and fortunately, too, it is most get-at-able. There are 
thirty-six hundred miles of river and lake in the North on 
which steamers are plying to-day and which are open for 
navigation for six months in every year. The first rail- 
way that comes in will tap a system of transporation 
equalled only on this continent by the Mississippi and St. 
Lawrence with the Great Lakes. The American Gov- 
ernment has spent two hundred million dollars on the im- 
provement of Mississippi navigation, and to-day it is not 
as valuable a national asset as the great Athabasca-Mac- 
kenzie-Peace system is as it came from the hand of Nature. 
Thirty thousand bushels of wheat that would grade 'No. 
I Northern' was produced in the Peace River Country this 



THE NEW NORTH 

year, besides thousands of bushels of oats and barley. In 
this Northland there are 100,000,000 acres of land fit for 
the growing of grain." 

Charles Dickens used to carry a note-book in his vest- 
pocket in which he jotted down names that tickled his 
fancy. Were Dickens to travel this route with us, his 
name-note-books would bulge. Where Lesser Slave River 
issues out of Lesser Slave Lake, we found Tom Lilac in 
earnest conversation with Jilly Loo-bird. Jilly has navi- 
gated the North all the way from Athabasca Landing to 
Hudson's Hope on the Peace, seeking a wife, and still lacks 
his connubial rib. Being told that ladies are on board, 
he breathlessly asks, "What colour ?" When he learns that 
we are white, Jilly makes a dash for some cache in the 
woods which takes the place of clothes-closet, but the 
steamer has passed on before he emerges. Another lost 
chance, both for Jilly and the writer! For two or three 
miles here, where the river runs out of the lake, it never 
freezes, and ducks and wild-fowl remain here all the win- 
ter in open water. Last month, in this immediate vicinity, 
no fewer than one hundred moose were killed. Lilac tells 
us that last winter there was no snow here until March, 
and two winters ago absolutely no snow fell whatever, so 
that the sleighs were not gotten out and all the freight- 
ing had to be done with waggons. "No need to starve 
here," says Lilac, "the trout run up to forty pounds each. 
There are whitefish and grayling, and I gather berries all 
the year round. In summer, I get the red and white cur- 
rants, raspberries, saskatoons, blueberries, gooseberries, 
and strawberries, and all winter long there are both high- 
bush and low-bush cranberries." 

368 



LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 




Three Generations 



369 



THE NEW NORTH 

Travelling with us are Judge Noel and Judge Beck, 
making the first circuit of justice through this country. 
Although they had come all the way from Edmonton look- 
ing for trouble, so splendid has been the surveillance of 
the Mounted Police here that no one could scrape up one 
case for the judges to try. The Peace River people seemed 
somehow to think that in greeting the judges with an 
empty house the settlement had failed to make good. 
Some one comforts them with setting forth as the ethics of 
the case the fact that the judges should be presented with 
white gloves as the traditional sign of an empty docket. 
Again is Peace River chagrined, neither The Company 
nor the French Company has white kids in stock. Each 
judge is made the recipient of a handsome pair of moose- 
skin gloves, as a substitute, ornamented with beads and 
quills of the porcupine. 

At Norris's, we leave the steamer and shoot the current 
of the swift Lesser Slave River in a cranky dugout. The 
Dominion Government, with a series of wing-dams, is put- 
ting this river to school, teaching it how to make its bed 
neatly and wash out its own channel. Where the Lesser 
Slave River runs into the Athabasca, we change the dug- 
out for a scow, and from there to Athabasca Landing float 
down the last stretch of our northern waterways of delight. 
There is frost each night now and the deciduous trees on 
the banks are a rich riot of colour. We resurrect from the 
depths all the warm clothing available and have opportu- 
nity of testing in their own latitudes the lynx-paw robes, 
moose-skin hunting-coats, and other spoils that we are 
bringing out to civilisation. 

Every passenger who floats with us enlarges our knowl- 

37° 



LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 

edge and enriches our vocabulary. Judge Noel's body- 
guard is a young stripling of the Mounted Police, born in 
dear old Lunnon. It is always interesting to note the dif- 
ferent things of which people are proud. Old men boast 
of their age and young ones of their youth. The fat 
woman in the side-show is arrogant over her avoirdupois ; 
the debutante glories in her slender waist; and the globe- 




A Family on the Lesser Slave 

trotter triumphs in the miles he has travelled. Wyllie 
claimed distinction in never having left Chipewyan. This 
Mounted Policeman, who stretches out on the scow, plumes 
himself on two things : "I 'old the dahnsin' champion- 
ship of Edmonton. I got a gold watch lahst winter for 
waltzin'." We smile approval, and the constable contin- 
ues, "I waltzed, — reversing — an 'our-an'-a-'alf ! And — ," 
straightening himself up, "I am the best-tattooed man in 
the Province of Alberta." 

37 1 



THE NEW NORTH 

Rich is the descriptive language of the North, and we 
lie awake on the scows, rolled in our blankets, loath to lose 
any of it. "Jim" is at the sweep. Many of the men are 
going out from the North for the first time in four or five 
years. They also seem too interested to slumber, and all 
night long the conversation goes on. A priest is describ- 
ing some man who seems to be hard to identify. 'You 
know him, — the son of the ole man with the patch on his 
nose wot died. I christen him last winter." No one is 
more apt at naming than these men. Two days ago, at the 




A One Night Stand 

treaty at Lesser Slave, when a smiling couple drew five dol- 
lars for a baby one day old, a Cree bystander dubbed the 
baby "dat little meal-ticket." A young girl who came up to 
claim her money was nicknamed "Pee-shoo," or "The 
Lynx," because of her bad temper. So we see where all 
the old cats of the south come from. 

The scow glides on, and we doze, but do not sleep. In 
the dark she hits something and bumps us wide awake to 
hear the reassuring, 'This is where Pat Cunningham's 
horses were drownded last week." Under Jim's com- 

37? 



> 



LESSER SLAVE LAKE TO EDMONTON 

mand, everybody works, even learned judges from Edmon- 
ton. He says, "Take another shot at the oars, and then 
you can hit the feathers." In the morning, one half-breed 
fails to turn up for meat-su and the comment is, "He feels 
the feathers pullin." "Don't blime 'im," remarks the con- 
stable, passing the tea, "only fools and 'orses work." 

"He reached out his hand for a drink," rendered into 
trans-Athabascan would be, "He got his thievin' irons on 
the joy-juice," or "He stretched his mud-hooks for the 
fight-water." "He set him a-foot for his horse" means 
"He stole his horse," and from this we derive all such 
phrases as, "He set him a-foot for his blankets," "He set 
him a-foot for his furs," "He set him a-foot for his wife." 

The springy tussocks of grass growing in swampy 
places are tetes dcs femmes, a name that pleased our fancy 
and made us think each time we negotiated them of walk- 
ing over the swaying heads of women in a crowd. To call 
the tribes together, Indians are wont to send out significant 
little pieces of wood. The announcement in the society 
columns, if the Indians had any, would be, "The Crees sent 
out chips for a crush." An Indian far down the Macken- 
zie had a name that kings might envy. He was known 
among his tribe as TJie-Man-Who-Goes-Around-and- 
Helps. When a beardless and ardent missionary ap- 
proached this splendid chief, wanting to "convert" him to 
the Christian religion, the old man replied with indulgent 
dignity, "My son, for eighty years have I served the Great 
Spirit in my own way. I fear I am now too old to change." 



CHAPTER XXIV 

HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

"The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as 
the homeborn among" you, and thou shalt love him as thyself." 

— Leviticus, XIX, 34. 

Edmonton once more. Two Spanish sailors ship- 
wrecked and navigating the Pacific on a log, search the 




A Rye Field in Brandon, Manitoba 

shore for a sign. Into what land are they drifting? The 
one at the bow (does a log have a bow?) sees something 

374 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

through the haze — "Gracias a Dios! Praise be to God, it 
is a Christian country! I see the gallows!" We too get 
our sign. We reach Edmonton on Convocation Day. 

Most young countries for the first ten years of their lives 
confine their energies to roads, bridges, transportation — 
things of the market-place. Alberta has been a full-fledged 
Province of Canada for barely three years, and, coming out 
of the wilds, we sit on the back benches and see her open 
the doors of her first Provincial University. The record 
is unique and significant. On the banks of the Saskatche- 
wan rise the walls of the new Parliament Buildings, a re- 
plica in small of Minnesota's State Capitol at St. Paul. 
This new Province, carved out of the heart of the world's 
biggest wheat-farm, would seem to hold within it all the 
elements that make for national greatness : the richest soil 
in the world, oil, timber, fur, fish, great underlying coal 
measures, a hinterland which is a very Pandora's box of 
gifts. Strong, sane, young people have the situation in 
hand, each alert to grasp the skirts of happy Chance. 
Peace walks within these western borders. What more 
would you? 

The very first man we hunt out in Edmonton is Mr. 
Wyllie of Chipewyan. On his promised visit to the Ork- 
neys the old man had gotten as far as Winnipeg, where 
the crowds of the modern city affrighted him. "Miss 
Cameron, the men on the streets were as trees walking, 
and no man stopped to ask how the other was doing. If 
that is the world, I wanted to go no farther. I'm going 
back to Chipewyan, and I will take my family with me. 
We go home with dogs on the first ice!" Poor Wyllie! 
Before the bells rang out the Old Year, his soul heard the 

375 



THE NEW NORTH 

summons none may disregard, and alone he went out on 
the Long Journey. 

What of Inspector Pelletier, Walker, Joyce, and Con- 
way, essaying the traverse from Resolution to Hudson 
Bay? For weeks after coming out we waited for news 
of the party. Month succeeded month and no word came 
out of the white silence. Hudson Bay has no daily mail 
service. : 'There ain't no busses runnin' from the Bank to 
Mandalay." It is not until March that the welcome word 
conies that the original party safely made salt water. The 
relieved tension at Regina headquarters and the joy of 
personal friends is dimmed by the news of the death of 
Corporal Donaldson, who joined the others at Chesterfield 
Inlet. Donaldson, in company with Corporal Reeves, 
started down Hudson Bay in an open boat and encountered 
a herd of walruses. Enraged and maddened at the shots of 
the men, one huge animal made a charge, the boat was 
upset, and Donaldson, trying to make shore, was drowned. 
Reeves survived. 

It seems to be a chapter of accidents. Just as this book 
goes to press we learn of a double fatality which attended 
the transport of the 1909 outfit of Count von Hammerstein. 
This plucky developer of McMurray oilfields, while run- 
ning Grand Rapids on the Athabasca (the rapids which 
we had descended in an empty while the other sturgeon- 
heads were discharging freight at Grand Rapids Island), 
struck a boulder. The boat turned turtle and the three 
men were tossed into the torrent, — von Hamerstein, V. 
Volksooky, a young Russian, and a French half-breed, 
La France. The Count was washed ashore and escaped, 
but the others were drowned. Deaths such as these are 

376 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

the price of Empire. When the railroad reaches the Atha- 
basca, the running of these dangerous rapids will no longer 
be necessary. 

In the footprints of Back and Samuel Hearne, Alex- 




Charles M. Hays, President of the Grand Trunk Railway 

ander Mackenzie and Sir John Franklin, for six months 
we have been treading the silent places. We have thought 
much of these faith-possessed men who found the roads 
that others follow. In faith they wrought. Canada does 
well to honour these great of old, and that she appreciates 
the work of her early explorers is shown in the fact that 
23 377 



THE NEW NORTH 



British Columbia recently granted a pension to the grand- 
daughter of Simon Fraser, the man who in 1808 first 
sailed down the great river that bears his name. But the 
day of our great men is not over ; Canada still in her great 
North and West has Pathfinders of Empire. The early 




William Mackenzie, President of the Canadian Northern Railway 

voyageurs made their quest in the dugout and the birch- 
bark; and the tools of these are rails of steel and iron 
horses. 

We are accustomed to look upon a railroad as a cold 
thing of dirt and sand and rock, ties and steel, — a mechan- 
ical something associated with gradients and curves. But 

378 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 



the history of railroading in Canada is one long romance ; 
back of each line is its creative wizard. We are too near 
these men to get their proper measure ; the historian of 
the future will place their names on Canada's bead-roll : — 
Charles M. Hays, the forceful President of the Grand 
Trunk Pacific; 
Mackenzie and 
Mann; William 
Whyte of the 
Canadian Pacific. 
Canada owes 
much to Caledo- 
nia. Nine-tenths 
of those pioneers 
of pioneers, the 
trading adven- 
turers of the H. 
B. Co m p a n y, 
came from Scot- 
land, that grey 
land where a ju- 
dicious mixture 
of Scripture and 
Shorter Cate- 
chism, oatmeal 

and austerity, breeds boys of dour determination and 
pawky wit, boys who, whatever their shortcomings, are 
not wont to carry their wishbone where their backbone 
ought to be. A conspicuous example of the dynamic 
Scottish Canadian, hale at sixty-six, is William Whyte, 
Vice-President of the Canadian Pacific Railway. At an 

379 




Donald D. Mann, Vice-president of the Canadian 
Northern Railway 



THE NEW NORTH 



aee when most men are content to "drowse them close 
by a dying fire," William Whyte finds himself in com- 
plete charge of all the affairs of the Canadian Pacific 
Railway Company between the Great Lakes and the 
Pacific. Through the positions of brakemen, freight clerk, 

yard master, 
conductor, night 
s t a t i o n-a gent, 
passenger agent, 
this man worked 
on his own pas- 
sage along 
Fame's ladder. 
Twenty years of 
adolescence and 
preparatio n, 
twenty years 
with the Grand 
Trunk, a quarter 
of a century with 
the Canadian 

William Whyte, Second Vice-president of the ^ aCltlC, till S IS 
Canadian Pacific Railway William Wliyte's 

record of splen- 
did service. He has always played the game and he is 
still in the harness. 

When people enquired of the early Christians, "What 
do you call your new religion?" they answered, "We call 
it The Road." If religion is the best work of a man made 
visible, as I think it is, then the Canadian Northern Road 
may well stand for the religious expression of the men 

380 




HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

who made it. It takes more than money, more than 
dreams, more than ambition, for two men in twelve years 
to build, own, and personally control five thousand miles 
of railway. As Riley says, it takes sweat. A mile a 
day for twelve years, — this is the construction-record of 
the Canadian Northern. It sounds like the story of Jo- 
nah's gourd. In 1896, nothing. In 1909, a railroad line 
with earnings of ten million dollars a year west of Port 




In the Wheat Fields 



Arthur alone, and twelve thousand people on the regular 
pay-roll. Beginning in Manitoba and operating in the 
three prairie Provinces, the Canadian Northern is pri- 
marily a western railway, its remarkable growth being 
coincident with and closely related to the tide of immigra- 
tion. 

As a case in point, on our way south from Edmonton 
we pass through the divisional point of Vermilion on the 
Canadian Northern, which is not to be confounded with 
our Far North Vermilion-on-the-Peace. Vermilion ex- 

381 



THE NEW NORTH 

emplifies wonderfully the Go-Fever and the Grow-Fever 
of the Prairies. Before it was three months old its citi- 
zens had organised a Board of Trade, had given it a 
Methodist Church, a newspaper, a bank, a public school, 
three lumber-yards, three hotels, three restaurants, four 
implement warehouses, two hardware stores, two butcher 
shops, four real estate offices, a furniture store, a drug- 
store, a jewellery store, a steam laundry, a flour and feed 
store, a shoe-shop, a bakery, and a bookshop. Three bar- 
bers had hung out their signs, and so had two doctors, 
a photographer, a lawyer, a dentist, and an auctioneer. 
There were two pool-rooms and a bowling-alley. 

Farther south we reach the town of Vonda. The Cana- 
dian Northern reached this neighbourhood, and the town- 
site was surveyed in June, 1905. That year Vonda shipped 
over the line one hundred thousand bushels of wheat, and 
in 1906 her exports were five hundred thousand bushels. 
The Canadian farmer looks upon the railroad as his 
friend; you cannot expect him to use the inclusive con- 
demnation, "Corporations have no souls." The main line 
of the Canadian Northern runs from Port Arthur on 
Lake Superior — where, by the way, stands the world's 
largest grain elevator — to beyond Edmonton on the North 
Saskatchewan, operating in the heart of one gigantic 
wheat-farm. The method of construction has been unique. 
The owners commenced to build branch railways almost 
before they had a main line. Little spurs to small ele- 
vators grew into long branches flanked with bigger ele- 
vators, and the elevators evolved into villages, towns, and 
cities, until to-day the result of twelve years' growth shows 
a main line of thirteen hundred miles, with over three 

382 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

thousand miles of branch railways. An orchard tree is 
a good fruit-bearer when the thick clustering branches are 
more in evidence than the long thin trunk, and the same 
applies to railroads. But this main line will grow, too. 
Working out from its wheaten heart, its natural line of 
growth is east to Hudson Bay, north beyond Edmonton, 
and west to the Pacific. Surely the tentacles are pushing 
out. Already the Alberta Legislature has granted the 
Canadian Northern a charter to Athabasca Landing, and 
one hundred miles of steel will here tap all the lush land 
watered by the Peace and the Athabasca. 

More interesting than the line which gridirons the 
wheat-lands we are passing through, are the men who made 
it. To try to write the history of Western Canada's de- 
velopment and not speak of Mr. Mackenzie and Mr. Mann 
would be as difficult as Mr. Dick's efforts to tell his story 
without mentioning the unfortunate Charles I. William 
Mackenzie is the Cecil Rhodes of Canada — gentle, kindly, 
almost retiring in his manner, and with a glance as in- 
scrutable as the sea. Beginning as a school-teacher, he 
early threw aside the ferule and the chalk, to get into the 
world of action. In his time he has built shacks, kept a 
country store, and run a saw-mill. Three things come to 
him as priceless treasure out of the self-discipline of these 
experiences : a rare aptitude to see and to focus the central 
idea of any proposition, quick and unerring decision, and 
the power of ready calculation. "I am seldom wrong in 
a figure," is one of his few admissions about himself. 
The President of the Canadian Northern travels without 
a secretary, dictates letters sparingly, and works in an 
office as bare of adornment as a monk's cell. 

383 



THE NEW NORTH 

And his working partner? Donald D. Mann is a man 
of deeds rather than words. James J. Hill has declared 
Mr. Mann to be the greatest railway builder in the world. 
Mr. Mann was born in Ontario not far from the sleepy 
town of Acton and just six miles east of Rockwood, 
the birthplace of James J. Hill. These two boys learned 
to swim in the same swimming-hole. One wonders from 
what roadside spring they quaffed the draught which sent 
them railroad-building. Mr. Mann thinks it a great ad- 
vantage to be born a country boy, for he says it makes a 
lad frugal, strong, and resourceful. It worked out this 
way in his own case at least, for there is not a thing in 
railroad building that Mr. Mann cannot do with his own 
hands, from shoeing a mule to finding the best pass in 
the Rockies through which to slide his iron horse down 
to the sea. Direct, strong, simple, he knows how to con- 
trol himself and manage others. D. D. Mann is a con- 
spicuous example of what a Canadian boy has managed 
to accomplish by his own efforts. The beauty of this 
Western Canada is that it holds out opportunities to every 
plucky lad who has initiative and who is willing to work; 
nothing is stratified, the whole thing is formative. 

While the steel kings are letting the light of day into 
this great granary, they are being helped by a govern- 
ment representative, as democratic and direct as any of 
the pathmakers whose visible work we have been noticing. 
The Hon. Frank Oliver, Canada's Minister of the Interior, 
is essentially a self-made man. Before the railroad men 
realised their vision splendid, young Mr. Oliver and his 
bride rode into Edmonton on an ox-cart, with a modest 
little printing-press tucked away among the wedding-gifts 

384 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 



and household gods. Oliver was a practical printer and 
soon issued a hand-dodger called by courtesy a newspa- 
per. The editing habit sticks. The Minister of the In- 
terior owns and publishes the Edmonton Bulletin. Mr. 
Mann says, "I like 
building railroads" ; 
Mr. Oliver might 
parody him and say, 
"I like building 
newspapers." 

Arrived at Winni- 
peg, we look back 
across this great 
prairie we have 
twice traversed. 
The land stands 
ready to produce 
bread for the na- 
tions; Nature has 
done her part, now 
man must do his. 
The two greatest 
needs of Western 
Canada to-day are 
transportation and 

immigration. Of the one we have spoken; the other 
claims our interest even more compelling, for man is 
more vital than machinery. Canada is a country with a 
meagre past, a solid present, and an illimitable future. 

She, moreover, is the last unstaked Empire under a 
white man's sky, — where wilderness and man are meeting. 

385 




Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the 
Interior 



THE NEW1TORTH 

The flood of immigration hither is not the outcome of 
the temporary mood of mankind or of the immigration 
policy of a government. It is the natural sequence of the 
economic conditions of a continent seeking the outlet of 
least resistance to a more favourable situation. The people 
who are coming: in are not dreamers but workers. "The 




Threshing Grain 



world's greatest wheat-farm," says the economist. It is 
more than this: it is a human crucible, and we are wit- 
nessing here the birth-throes of an entirely new nation. 

While seventy-five per cent of Canada's wheat-farmers 
are either Canadian, American, or British born, and of 
the class that preserves the homogeneity of the race, every 
country on the map pays tribute to the plains. Austrians 

3 86 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

are here and Galicians, Hungarians and Belgians, Dutch 
and French and Germans, Italians and Polish, the Russian 
Doukhobortsi, Finns and Danes and Icelanders, Swedes 
in thousands and stalwart Norwegians. South Africans 
and West Indians are coming in with Bermudians and 
Jamaicans and the bearded Spaniard. Far off on the 




Doukhobors Threshing Flax 



Pacific Coast, strangers are knocking at the western 
gate, — Chinese, Japanese, and Hindoos. 

There is no Established Church in Canada; it is the 
freest land in the world. On his one hundred and sixty 
government-given acres, the new arrival may worship his 
God in his own way. The Greek Church in Winnipeg 
has a Bishop who one day each year makes holy water 
of the Red River when the Czar is performing the same 
blessing on the Neva. Down in Southern Alberta refugee 

387 



THE NEW NORTH 

Mormons from Salt Lake grow sugar-beets, revere the 
memory of Brigham Young, and multiply after their kind. 
Until within two years ago the expatriated Russian Douk- 
hobors maintained a commonwealth of ten thousand souls, 
eschewing liquors and flesh-meats, making the prairie blos- 
som into bumper harvests, and holding all things in com- 
mon. 

Winnipeg has three thousand Icelanders who, every 
August, take a day off to celebrate the fact that the Danish 
King, in 1874, granted a constitution to Iceland. When 
you ask them why they came to America, they say, "Did 
not our Lief Ericcson discover this continent, why should- 
n't we come?" The Icelanders boast two members in the 
Manitoba legislature. A Mennonite is a member of the 
Parliament of Alberta. The first graduate of Wesley 
College in Winnipeg to find a place on the staff of his 
Alma Mater is also a Mennonite. Winnipeg has several 
Roman Catholic Polish lawyers. Statistics prove that the 
young Jewish people of Western Canada patronise the 
public libraries more than any other class or race. All 
the citizens-in-the-making are closely interested in politics. 
Recently there was chronicled the formation in Winnipeg 
of a Syrian Liberal Club and a Syrian Conservative Club. 
Up in Edmonton the Galicians (Ruthenians?) have just 
organised a corps of volunteer militia to serve the Cana- 
dian country of their adoption. 

The Americanisation of Canada? During the past 
seven years over three hundred and fifty thousand people 
have come to us from the United States. Is this American 
invasion to be feared politically? Western Canada has 
no more desirable citizens than those who come to us 

388 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

from the south. They are not failures, but are people who 
have made good, intent on making better. One generation 
at the most, — sometimes but a few years, — converts these 




Sir William Van Home, First President of the Canadian Pacific Railway 



into Canadian voters. The troubled English brother 
should remember that when "American" farmers in Can- 
ada pronounce on Canadian matters they do so constitu- 
tionally at the polls and as Canadian citizens. As Cana- 

389 



THE NEW NORTH 

dians we believe that our national institutions, though far 
from perfect, are in some respects superior to those of the 
United States. We believe they are at once more elastic, 
more responsive to the popular will, and more stable be- 
cause more elastic. The west is gaining in political power 
as it gains in population and prosperity, and fortunately 
our government machinery has been well tested before it 
is called upon to feel the strain of our rapidly-increasing 
population. Canada may construct where older nations 
must reconstruct, and if we borrow an American insti- 
tution or two, provided it be a good one, let no man hold 
up hands in holy horror. Japan has borrowed nationally 
whenever she saw, lying around loose, something she could 
use, and Japan is as Japanese at heart as she was in the 
days of the Tycoon and the two-sworded Samurai. Bel- 
gium to-day, after centuries of contiguity and intercourse, 
is not exactly France; and little Switzerland, surrounded 
by the Powers, will be Switzerland till the last curtain- 
fall. 

"Is Canada loyal to England? 1 ' is a question that some- 
times meets us. No, Canada is loyal to the British Empire 
of which she forms a part. Let England see to it that 
she, too, is loyal. 

Canada has two hundred millions of arable acres south 
of the Saskatchewan. North of this river, in the pleasant 
valleys of the Peace, are one hundred million acres more. 
If Canada were as thickly populated as the British Isles 
it would have a billion people. The mind reels and the 
imagination staggers in thinking of the future of this 
rich land. God has intended this to be the cradle of a 
new race, a race born of the diverse entities now fusing 

390 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

in its crucible. Most of these people in time will inter- 
marry, — Germans and Latins, Celts and Slavs, and with 
these the Semitic peoples, in varying proportions and com- 
binations. Physically, what will be the result? Men- 
tally and morally, what type will prevail? Drawn by the 
lure of the wheat, all pour themselves into the melting-pot. 
What of the new Canadian who will step out ? 

In the point of population, Canada begins the twentieth 
century where the United States began the nineteenth. 
The race is ours to run. Wise the nation, as is the indi- 
vidual, who can learn his lesson from a page torn out of 
his neighbour's book, learn what to follow and what to 
avoid. Our fore-elders who laid the foundations for us 
laid them four-square. As Canadians, we owe a debt to 
the Fathers of Confederation and their successors. In 
the West, our particular thanks are due to the Hudson's 
Bay Company, the R. N. W. M. P., and all those factors 
which established British law "in the beginning." Can- 
ada has never seen a lynching; we have had no Indian 
war; with but one weak-kneed exception there has been 
no attempt to hold up a train within our Western borders. 
This is the inheritance of the people of this generation, 
and on this foundation we must build. Our hope is in 
the children. 

On the benches of one school-room in Edmonton I found 
children who had been born in Canada, the United States, 
England, Scotland, Russia, New Zealand, Poland, Switzer- 
land, Australia, and Austro-Hungary. They were all 
singing "The Maple Leaf Forever." It is the lessons these 
children are to learn in that little red school-house which 
will determine the future of Western Canada, and not the 

391 



THE NEW NORTH 

yearly tale of forty-bushel wheat. In the past, nations 
out of their very fatness have decayed. Many signs are 
full of hope. Last winter Mrs. Ray travelled alone with 
dog-sled all the way from Hudson Bay to Winnipeg to 
place her children in school. Her husband is a fur-trader 
and could not leave his post. At all hazards the bairns 
must be educated, so the brave mother journeyed out with 
them ! 

May I close with a purely personal note? At the end 
of a summer which had showered us with kindness, I 
was to hear from the lips of a Roman priest in St. Boni- 
face the most delightful tribute I have had in my life. 
We had gone across the river to see the holy relics and 
skulls, the result of the La Verendrye research carried on 
by this clergy in the Lake of the Woods country. I was 
anxious to get the story of the recovery of these historic 
remains and also to secure photographs. But the Father 
was obdurate, for he thought his Bishop might not approve. 
We turned to go downstairs from the third story of the 
seminary. Looking in at an open door, my eye was caught 
by the familiar wording of a blackboard problem. "If 16 
men and 4 boys working 4 hours a day dig a trench 82 
yards long ." And I halted, as the one-time circus- 
horse stops when he hears the drum of a passing band. 

: 'You are interested?" queried the Father. 

r 'Yes," I acknowledged, "I once taught school." 

He, still in the trammels, looked the enquiry he did not 
utter. 

"I taught school for twenty-five years," I admitted. 

We walked on down the stairs to the next landing in 

392 



HOMES AMONG THE YELLOW WHEAT 

silence, when he turned to me with, "And you taught 
school — for twen-ty five years?" 

I nodded my head, and we went on. At the next land- 
ing the remark was repeated. At the foot of the stairs 
he excused himself and came back with the photographs 
which he presented to me with an Old World courtesy 
and dignity. Grasping my hand in farewell, once more 
the man of God wondered, "And for twen-ty five years 
you taught school. And you remain so — " He hesitated 
for the word, and I wondered what it would be. At last 
it came, — the tribute of one who expected to teach school 
all his life to one who had put in a quarter of a century 
at the work and still survived, — "You have taught school 
for twen-ty five years, and you remain so glad!" 

And this is the keynote of what the summer has left 
with us. As Canadians, looking at this Western Canada 
which has arrived and thinking of the lands of Canada's 
fertile Northland far beyond, for the future we are full 
of optimism, and of the present we are glad. 



27 



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